Was The Smart Money Right About Bruker Corporation (BRKR)?

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 867 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 September 30th. Hedge funds’ consensus stock picks performed spectacularly over the last 3 years, but 2022 hasn’t been kind to hedge funds. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Hedge fund interest in Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that BRKR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare BRKR to other stocks including Godaddy Inc (NYSE:GDDY), FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC), and InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Now let’s take a glance at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR).

NAVELLIER & ASSOCIATES

Louis Navellier of Navellier & Associates

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

At the end of September, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 0% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BRKR over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) was held by Arrowstreet Capital, which reported holding $153 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Marshall Wace LLP with a $57.1 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Two Sigma Advisors, Montanaro Asset Management, and Alyeska Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Montanaro Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR), around 5.39% of its 13F portfolio. Sivik Global Healthcare is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 1.4 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BRKR.

Because Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) has witnessed a decline in interest from the smart money, logic holds that there lies a certain “tier” of hedgies that slashed their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Richard SchimeláandáLawrence Sapanski’s Cinctive Capital Management sold off the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, worth about $10.2 million in call options. Richard SchimeláandáLawrence Sapanski’s fund, Cinctive Capital Management, also cut its call options, about $1.5 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR). These stocks are Godaddy Inc (NYSE:GDDY), FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC), InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG), Trex Company, Inc. (NYSE:TREX), Procore Technologies Inc. (NYSE:PCOR), Westlake Chemical Corporation (NYSE:WLK), and Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NASDAQ:HST). All of these stocks’ market caps match BRKR’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
GDDY 37 2299629 -2
FMC 28 349943 -5
IHG 9 51166 3
TREX 21 222428 -4
PCOR 26 2070478 26
WLK 34 455623 -1
HST 16 178357 -8
Average 24.4 803946 1.3

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $804 million. That figure was $552 million in BRKR’s case. Godaddy Inc (NYSE:GDDY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BRKR is 74.3. 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 29.6% in 2021 and beat the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately, BRKR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BRKR were disappointed as the stock returned -14.7% since the end of September (through 1/31) 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 all of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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