Is Pan American Silver Corp. (PAAS) A Good Stock To Buy?

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 866 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 March 31st. In this article we look at what those investors think of Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS).

Is PAAS a good stock to buy? Hedge fund interest in Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that PAAS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 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 YETI Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YETI), BlackLine, Inc. (NASDAQ:BL), and Terminix Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:TMX) to gather more data points.

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Richard Driehaus of Driehaus Capital

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

At the end of March, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards PAAS over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Is PAAS A Good Stock To Buy?

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, David Greenspan’s Slate Path Capital has the most valuable position in Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS), worth close to $103.5 million, accounting for 6.7% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Sprott Asset Management, led by Eric Sprott, holding a $91.8 million position; 5.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other members of the smart money that hold long positions include Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital, Renaissance Technologies and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Slate Path Capital allocated the biggest weight to Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS), around 6.72% of its 13F portfolio. Brightlight Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 5.93 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PAAS.

Since Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS) has experienced a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedgies that elected to cut their full holdings by the end of the first quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital said goodbye to the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $56.6 million in stock, and Hugh Sloane’s Sloane Robinson Investment Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $22.1 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS). We will take a look at YETI Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YETI), BlackLine, Inc. (NASDAQ:BL), Terminix Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:TMX), Sana Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ:SANA), BWX Technologies Inc (NYSE:BWXT), Reynolds Consumer Products Inc. (NASDAQ:REYN), and Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to PAAS’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
YETI 30 159366 11
BL 24 271832 1
TMX 27 456007 -3
SANA 15 158923 15
BWXT 16 154661 -3
REYN 19 153098 1
SLAB 18 142253 0
Average 21.3 213734 3.1

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $214 million. That figure was $352 million in PAAS’s case. YETI Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YETI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sana Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ:SANA) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PAAS is 72. 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 24% in 2021 through July 9th and beat the market again by 6.7 percentage points. Unfortunately PAAS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on PAAS were disappointed as the stock returned -4.9% since the end of March (through 7/9) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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