Is eHealth, Inc. (EHTH) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

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. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 867 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th. In this article we look at what those investors think of eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH).

eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that EHTH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Azure Power Global Limited (NYSE:AZRE), Nuvalent Inc. (NASDAQ:NUVL), and MarineMax, Inc. (NYSE:HZO) to gather more data points.

Jeff Smith

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 we’re going to analyze the latest hedge fund action surrounding eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 35 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in EHTH a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Is EHTH A Good Stock To Buy?

The largest stake in eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH) was held by Starboard Value LP, which reported holding $82.9 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Hudson Executive Capital with a $60.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Palo Alto Investors, Dendur Capital, and Cannell Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Headlands Capital allocated the biggest weight to eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH), around 10.74% of its 13F portfolio. Roumell Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 9.19 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EHTH.

Judging by the fact that eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few money managers that slashed their entire stakes heading into Q4. It’s worth mentioning that Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management dumped the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth close to $12 million in stock. Andrew Kurita’s fund, Kettle Hill Capital Management, also said goodbye to its stock, about $11.8 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH). These stocks are Azure Power Global Limited (NYSE:AZRE), Nuvalent Inc. (NASDAQ:NUVL), MarineMax, Inc. (NYSE:HZO), Tupperware Brands Corporation (NYSE:TUP), Adecoagro SA (NYSE:AGRO), Denny’s Corporation (NASDAQ:DENN), and RPC, Inc. (NYSE:RES). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to EHTH’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
AZRE 6 20030 -2
NUVL 11 559270 11
HZO 17 55361 2
TUP 12 108577 -6
AGRO 12 296373 -2
DENN 18 103527 -2
RES 12 26266 -3
Average 12.6 167058 -0.3

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $167 million. That figure was $296 million in EHTH’s case. Denny’s Corporation (NASDAQ:DENN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Azure Power Global Limited (NYSE:AZRE) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:EHTH) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EHTH is 75.6. 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 gained 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and still beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EHTH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EHTH were disappointed as the stock returned -38% since the end of the third quarter (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 since 2019.

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