Is LeMaitre Vascular Inc (LMAT) A Good Stock To Buy?
At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 750 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we've gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms' portfolio holdings as of March 31. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) makes for a good investment right now.
LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) was in 11 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2019. LMAT has experienced an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with LMAT holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that lmat isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
Hedge funds' reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn't keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds' small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the market by 40 percentage points since May 2014 through May 30, 2019 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
[caption id="attachment_746893" align="aligncenter" width="473"]
Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace[/caption]
We're going to go over the recent hedge fund action surrounding LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT).
What does smart money think about LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT)?
Heading into the second quarter of 2019, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 83% from the fourth quarter of 2018. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards LMAT over the last 15 quarters. So, let's review 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, Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, holds the most valuable position in LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT). Millennium Management has a $5.4 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Paul Marshall and Ian Wace of Marshall Wace LLP, with a $5 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish contain Ken Griffin's Citadel Investment Group, Cliff Asness's AQR Capital Management and Israel Englander's Millennium Management.
As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, initiated the most outsized position in LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT). Millennium Management had $5.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander's Millennium Management also initiated a $0.6 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new LMAT positions are John Overdeck and David Siegel's Two Sigma Advisors, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell's Arrowstreet Capital, and Benjamin A. Smith's Laurion Capital Management.
Let's go over hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) but similarly valued. These stocks are Exterran Corporation (NYSE:EXTN), Partner Communications Company Ltd (NASDAQ:PTNR), NextDecade Corporation (NASDAQ:NEXT), and Tuniu Corporation (NASDAQ:TOUR). All of these stocks' market caps are similar to LMAT's market cap.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position EXTN,18,70361,3 PTNR,2,10140,0 NEXT,7,422092,-1 TOUR,5,33459,0 Average,8,134013,0.5 [/table]
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $134 million. That figure was $17 million in LMAT's case. Exterran Corporation (NYSE:EXTN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Partner Communications Company Ltd (NASDAQ:PTNR) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. Unfortunately LMAT wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LMAT were disappointed as the stock returned -11.9% during the same period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in Q2.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
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