Here is What Hedge Funds Think About National Instruments Corporation (NATI)

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI).

National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI) was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 35. NATI investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund interest recently. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with NATI holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that NATI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. With all of this in mind we’re going to analyze the new hedge fund action surrounding National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI).

Do Hedge Funds Think NATI Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 14% from the second quarter of 2021. By comparison, 22 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in NATI a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Millennium Management held the most valuable stake in National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI), which was worth $58.8 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Woodline Partners which amassed $47.7 million worth of shares. Royce & Associates, Bares Capital Management, and D E Shaw were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Force Hill Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI), around 1.39% of its 13F portfolio. Intrinsic Edge Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.85 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NATI.

Consequently, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Two Sigma Advisors, managed by John Overdeck and David Siegel, initiated the biggest position in National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI). Two Sigma Advisors had $12.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Mark Coe’s Intrinsic Edge Capital also made a $12.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new NATI investors: Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Peter Algert’s Algert Global, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Stantec Inc. (NYSE:STN), TIM S.A. (NYSE:TIMB), LegalZoom.com Inc. (NASDAQ:LZ), Terminix Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:TMX), Zhihu Inc. (NYSE:ZH), Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW), and CDK Global Inc (NASDAQ:CDK). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to NATI’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $193 million. That figure was $250 million in NATI’s case. Terminix Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:TMX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Stantec Inc. (NYSE:STN) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NATI is 78.6. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks returned 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th but still managed to beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on NATI as the stock returned 9.6% since the end of September (through 12/9) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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

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