Is ABIOMED, Inc. (ABMD) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

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 ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD).

ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD) investors should be aware of an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD) was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 35. Our calculations also showed that ABMD 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the latest hedge fund action surrounding ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 4% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ABMD over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $509 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Palo Alto Investors with a $179 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included AQR Capital Management, Two Sigma Advisors, and Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Palo Alto Investors allocated the biggest weight to ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD), around 10.8% of its 13F portfolio. Rhenman & Partners Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.6 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ABMD.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, created the most outsized position in ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD). Marshall Wace LLP had $9.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management also initiated a $2.7 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, Ran Pang’s Quantamental Technologies, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD) but similarly valued. These stocks are KANZHUN LIMITED (NASDAQ:BZ), NortonLifeLock Inc. (NASDAQ:NLOK), Plug Power, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLUG), CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CNP), Albertsons Companies, Inc. (NYSE:ACI), Apollo Global Management Inc (NYSE:APO), and Shaw Communications Inc (NYSE:SJR). This group of stocks’ market values resemble ABMD’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1566 million. That figure was $921 million in ABMD’s case. Apollo Global Management Inc (NYSE:APO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CNP) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. ABIOMED, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABMD) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ABMD is 44.1. 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 negative signal and 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and surpassed the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately ABMD wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); ABMD investors were disappointed as the stock returned -4.1% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

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