Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Lantheus Holdings Inc (LNTH)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 730 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 28th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH) based on that data.

Is Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH) the right pick for your portfolio? The best stock pickers are reducing their bets on the stock. The number of long hedge fund bets dropped by 3 recently. Our calculations also showed that LNTH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (see the video below).
5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ large-cap stock picks indeed failed to beat the market between 1999 and 2016. However, we were able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the market by 40 percentage points since May 2014 through May 30, 2019 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 25.7% through September 30, 2019. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Chuck Royce

Unlike former hedge manager, Dr. Steve Sjuggerud, who is convinced Dow will soar past 40000, our long-short investment strategy doesn’t rely on bull markets to deliver double digit returns. We only rely on hedge fund buy/sell signals. We’re going to take a look at the latest hedge fund action encompassing Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH).

How are hedge funds trading Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -17% from the first quarter of 2019. On the other hand, there were a total of 17 hedge funds with a bullish position in LNTH a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

No of Hedge Funds with LNTH Positions

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies has the biggest position in Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH), worth close to $50.5 million, amounting to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Justin John Ferayorni of Tamarack Capital Management, with a $20.1 million position; the fund has 6.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers that hold long positions consist of Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Because Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH) has experienced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there were a few hedge funds that decided to sell off their entire stakes in the second quarter. It’s worth mentioning that William C. Martin’s Raging Capital Management dumped the largest position of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $7.1 million in stock. Israel Englander’s fund, Millennium Management, also cut its stock, about $2.6 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds in the second quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH). We will take a look at Central European Media Enterprises Ltd. (NASDAQ:CETV), NIC Inc. (NASDAQ:EGOV), Kenon Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:KEN), and Brigham Minerals, Inc. (NYSE:MNRL). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to LNTH’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
CETV 8 9824 1
EGOV 17 90209 -1
KEN 1 1980 -1
MNRL 15 79480 15
Average 10.25 45373 3.5

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $45 million. That figure was $104 million in LNTH’s case. NIC Inc. (NASDAQ:EGOV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Kenon Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:KEN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Lantheus Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LNTH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 24.4% in 2019 through September 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 4 percentage points. Unfortunately LNTH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LNTH were disappointed as the stock returned -11.4% during the third quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.