Hedge Funds Are Coming Back To John Bean Technologies Corporation (JBT)
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 John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT).
Is John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT) a safe stock to buy now? Hedge funds were taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund bets increased by 8 recently. John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT) was in 21 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 21. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that JBT isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 13 hedge funds in our database with JBT positions at the end of the fourth quarter.
In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey's monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That's why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Chuck Schumer recently stated that marijuana legalization will be a Senate priority. So, we are checking out this under the radar stock that will benefit from this. 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. With all of this in mind we're going to go over the fresh hedge fund action surrounding John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT).
Do Hedge Funds Think JBT Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 62% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in JBT over the last 23 quarters. So, let's see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the biggest position in John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT). Royce & Associates has a $95.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.6% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, which holds a $10.3 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining professional money managers that are bullish comprise Ken Griffin's Citadel Investment Group, Dmitry Balyasny's Balyasny Asset Management and Richard S. Meisenberg's ACK Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position ACK Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT), around 3.45% of its 13F portfolio. Royce & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.64 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JBT.
Now, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, created the largest position in John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT). Balyasny Asset Management had $9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander's Millennium Management also made a $4.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new JBT investors: Renaissance Technologies, Parvinder Thiara's Athanor Capital, and Paul Tudor Jones's Tudor Investment Corp.
Let's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT) but similarly valued. We will take a look at AdaptHealth Corp. (NASDAQ:AHCO), World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE), 51job, Inc. (NASDAQ:JOBS), UniFirst Corp (NYSE:UNF), PNM Resources, Inc. (NYSE:PNM), Axis Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS), and Black Hills Corporation (NYSE:BKH). This group of stocks' market caps are closest to JBT's market cap.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position AHCO,17,306527,-6 WWE,25,256023,-4 JOBS,18,126535,2 UNF,17,53080,2 PNM,26,720736,-4 AXS,23,596246,2 BKH,18,89974,-1 Average,20.6,307017,-1.3 [/table]
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $307 million. That figure was $158 million in JBT's case. PNM Resources, Inc. (NYSE:PNM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand AdaptHealth Corp. (NASDAQ:AHCO) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JBT is 62.2. 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 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and beat the market again by 7.7 percentage points. Unfortunately JBT wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on JBT were disappointed as the stock returned 1% since the end of March (through 7/16) 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.
