Is Gentex Corporation (GNTX) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) based on that data.

Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) has seen a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) was in 35 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 40. There were 36 hedge funds in our database with GNTX positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that GNTX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -3% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 37 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in GNTX a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $94.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by AQR Capital Management with a $74.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D E Shaw, Royce & Associates, and Nitorum Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Nitorum Capital allocated the biggest weight to Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX), around 2.76% of its 13F portfolio. Factorial Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GNTX.

Due to the fact that Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there was a specific group of funds who were dropping their positions entirely heading into Q2. At the top of the heap, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management said goodbye to the largest investment of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth close to $32.4 million in stock. Dmitry Balyasny’s fund, Balyasny Asset Management, also dumped its stock, about $7.5 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) but similarly valued. We will take a look at West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. (NYSE:WFG), Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE:VNO), Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRTX), Carlisle Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CSL), Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI), GSX Techedu Inc. (NYSE:GSX), and Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to GNTX’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
WFG 25 580726 25
VNO 25 216181 2
MRTX 57 2867424 1
CSL 18 186375 1
SCI 23 709728 -5
GSX 30 277849 13
ALK 32 587935 -3
Average 30 775174 4.9

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 30 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $775 million. That figure was $538 million in GNTX’s case. Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRTX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Carlisle Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CSL) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Gentex Corporation (NASDAQ:GNTX) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GNTX is 52. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and beat the market again by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately GNTX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on GNTX were disappointed as the stock returned -6% since the end of March (through 6/25) 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.