ICU Medical, Inc. (ICUI): Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 867 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI)?

Is ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) a marvelous investment today? The smart money was in a bullish mood. The number of long hedge fund bets improved by 4 recently. ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 35. Our calculations also showed that ICUI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 27 hedge funds in our database with ICUI holdings at the end of June.

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. Now we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action encompassing ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 15% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ICUI over the last 25 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Nitorum Capital was the largest shareholder of ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI), with a stake worth $59 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Nitorum Capital was Redmile Group, which amassed a stake valued at $51.9 million. Partner Fund Management, Pura Vida Investments, and Pura Vida Investments 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 Nitorum Capital allocated the biggest weight to ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI), around 2.8% of its 13F portfolio. Tamarack Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.58 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ICUI.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, initiated the largest position in ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI). Balyasny Asset Management had $20.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard SchimeláandáLawrence Sapanski’s Cinctive Capital Management also initiated a $5.6 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ICUI investors: Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI). These stocks are AllianceBernstein Holding LP (NYSE:AB), Kodiak Sciences Inc (NASDAQ:KOD), Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS), Science Applications International Corp (NYSE:SAIC), Essent Group Ltd (NYSE:ESNT), Tenable Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TENB), and Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble ICUI’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $601 million. That figure was $382 million in ICUI’s case. Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand AllianceBernstein Holding LP (NYSE:AB) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ICUI is 75.2. 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. 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 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 gained 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately ICUI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ICUI were disappointed as the stock returned -3.1% since the end of September (through 11/30) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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