Is iRobot Corporation (IRBT) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

We already know that not all hedge funds are bullish on the stock and some hedge funds actually got rid of their positions entirely. Intriguingly, Willem Mesdag’s Red Mountain Capital got rid of the biggest stake of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $36.1 million in stock, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $6.8 million worth of shares.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT) but similarly valued. These stocks are COMSCORE, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR), ESCO Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ESE), Kaman Corporation (NYSE:KAMN), and Standex Int’l Corp. (NYSE:SXI). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble IRBT’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $122 million. That figure was $62 million in IRBT’s case. COMSCORE, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ESCO Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ESE) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Hedge funds actually think SCOR is a better stock than IRBT. Well, they were at least wrong in the short-term because SCOR returned only 5% since the end of September and underperformed IRBT by a large margin.