Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On LeMaitre Vascular Inc (LMAT)?

As we already know from media reports and hedge fund investor letters, hedge funds delivered their best returns in a decade. Most investors who decided to stick with hedge funds after a rough 2018 recouped their losses by the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. A significant number of hedge funds continued their strong performance in 2020 and 2021 as well. We get to see hedge funds’ thoughts towards the market and individual stocks by aggregating their quarterly portfolio movements and reading their investor letters. In this article, we will particularly take a look at what hedge funds think about LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT).

Hedge fund interest in LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that LMAT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 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 OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC), Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN), and Nautilus Biotechnology Inc (NASDAQ:NAUT) to gather more data points.

At the moment there are plenty of signals stock market investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A duo of the most innovative signals are hedge fund and insider trading interest. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can outpace the market by a solid amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 (through August 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 79 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. 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 glance at the latest hedge fund action surrounding LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT).

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

Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 9 hedge funds with a bullish position in LMAT a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors has the number one position in LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT), worth close to $5.9 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Renaissance Technologies, which holds a $2.8 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Engineers Gate Manager allocated the biggest weight to LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT), around 0.05% of its 13F portfolio. PDT Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LMAT.

Because LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) has witnessed falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of hedge funds that slashed their full holdings by the end of the second quarter. Intriguingly, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management cut the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $3.8 million in stock. Chuck Royce’s fund, Royce & Associates, also dropped its stock, about $0.7 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT). These stocks are OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC), Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN), Nautilus Biotechnology Inc (NASDAQ:NAUT), Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V. (NASDAQ:PLYA), Gogo Inc (NASDAQ:GOGO), Southside Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SBSI), and Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to LMAT’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $168 million. That figure was $13 million in LMAT’s case. Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V. (NASDAQ:PLYA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Southside Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SBSI) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LMAT is 34.3. 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 negative signal and 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and surpassed the market again by 6.2 percentage points. Unfortunately LMAT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); LMAT investors were disappointed as the stock returned -8.6% since the end of June (through 9/27) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

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

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