Should I Buy Permian Basin Royalty Trust (PBT)?

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended March 31st, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT).

Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 11. PBT has experienced an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds in recent months. There were 2 hedge funds in our database with PBT holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that PBT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

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Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $28 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a peek at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT).

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

At the end of March, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 50% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 3 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in PBT 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 Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT) was held by Horizon Asset Management, which reported holding $1.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Citadel Investment Group with a $0.1 million position. The only other hedge fund that is bullish on the company was MFP Investors.

As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers have jumped into Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT) headfirst. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, established the most valuable position in Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT). Citadel Investment Group had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT). These stocks are Abeona Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ABEO), Strongbridge Biopharma plc (NASDAQ:SBBP), Cumulus Media Inc (NASDAQ:CMLS), SWK Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ:SWKH), ASLAN Pharmaceuticals Limited (NASDAQ:ASLN), Heat Biologics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTBX), and Orion Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:ORN). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to PBT’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
ABEO 7 16688 -4
SBBP 11 24078 -2
CMLS 9 31704 0
SWKH 3 151366 0
ASLN 18 61164 13
HTBX 1 333 0
ORN 12 17965 -1
Average 8.7 43328 0.9

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $43 million. That figure was $1 million in PBT’s case. ASLAN Pharmaceuticals Limited (NASDAQ:ASLN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Heat Biologics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTBX) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PBT is 20.1. 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on PBT as the stock returned 18.2% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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