Is BRKR Stock A Buy or Sell?

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR).

Is BRKR stock a buy? Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) investors should be aware of a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 31. Our calculations also showed that BRKR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

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

At Q4’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -26% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BRKR over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, holds the number one position in Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR). Citadel Investment Group has a $86.5 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, which holds a $31.8 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining members of the smart money with similar optimism comprise Charles Montanaro’s Montanaro Asset Management, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Montanaro Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR), around 3.89% of its 13F portfolio. Pennant Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.55 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BRKR.

Seeing as Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) has witnessed a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers that slashed their entire stakes in the fourth quarter. At the top of the heap, Renaissance Technologies cut the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at about $10.6 million in stock. Steve Cohen’s fund, Point72 Asset Management, also dropped its stock, about $9.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 8 funds in the fourth quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF), LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA), Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH), Tata Motors Limited (NYSE:TTM), Vereit Inc (NYSE:VER), Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI), and Encompass Health Corporation (NYSE:EHC). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble BRKR’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $675 million. That figure was $253 million in BRKR’s case. LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Tata Motors Limited (NYSE:TTM) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BRKR is 41.5. 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 12.3% in 2021 through April 19th and still beat the market by 0.9 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on BRKR as the stock returned 23.8% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 4/19) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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