Is Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (BBRG) a Good Stock to Buy?

The worries about the election and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases have been keeping investors on the sidelines. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers have been underperforming main stock market indices since the middle of 2015. Interestingly though, smaller-cap stocks registered their best performance relative to the large-capitalization stocks since the end of the June quarter, suggesting that this may be the best time to take a cue from their stock picks. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index gained more than 15% since the beginning of the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark returned less than 6%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG).

Is Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG) the right investment to pursue these days? Hedge funds are surely in a pessimistic mood. The number of bullish hedge fund positions decreased by 3 lately. In this way, there were 8 hedge funds in our database with BBRG holdings at the end of the last quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare BBRG to other stocks including Key Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KTEC), UCP Inc (NYSE:UCP), and Sophiris Bio Inc (NASDAQ:SPHS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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How are hedge funds trading Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 8 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, down by 27% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 12 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in BBRG heading into this year. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

HedgeFundSentimentChart

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, D E Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, holds the number one position in Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG). D E Shaw has a $1 million position in the stock. Coming in second is Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors which holds a $0.5 million position. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions include John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Jeffrey Bronchick’s Cove Street Capital and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Due to the fact that Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG) has weathered bearish sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there is a sect of funds who were dropping their full holdings in the third quarter. Intriguingly, George McCabe’s Portolan Capital Management dropped the biggest stake of the 700 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, worth about $3 million in stock. Jim Simons’ fund, Renaissance Technologies, also sold off its stock, about $0.9 million worth.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG). We will take a look at Key Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KTEC), UCP Inc (NYSE:UCP), Sophiris Bio Inc (NASDAQ:SPHS), and Digital Turbine Inc (NASDAQ:APPS). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to BBRG’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
KTEC 6 17926 1
UCP 5 14060 0
SPHS 5 3361 2
APPS 4 1434 -1

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $9 million. That figure was $3 million in BBRG’s case. Key Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KTEC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Digital Turbine Inc (NASDAQ:APPS) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBRG) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.

Disclosure: None