Is Manitex International, Inc. (MNTX) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Al Green
Updated

Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow over 700 of the best-performing investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Is Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX) a good investment right now? Prominent investors are becoming more confident. The number of bullish hedge fund positions rose by 1 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that MNTX isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. MNTX was in 6 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of September. There were 5 hedge funds in our database with MNTX positions at the end of the previous quarter.

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 18 percentage points since May 2014 through December 3, 2018 (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.

Carlo Cannell
Carlo Cannell

Let's analyze the new hedge fund action encompassing Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX).

What have hedge funds been doing with Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX)?

At Q3's end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 20% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in MNTX over the last 13 quarters. With hedge funds' sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

No of Hedge Funds MNTX Positions
No of Hedge Funds MNTX Positions

Among these funds, Rutabaga Capital Management held the most valuable stake in Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX), which was worth $5.2 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Manatuck Hill Partners which amassed $2.8 million worth of shares. Moreover, Cannell Capital, Beddow Capital Management, and Renaissance Technologies were also bullish on Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, created the largest position in Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX). Citadel Investment Group had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let's now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Chemung Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:CHMG), MVB Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:MVBF), PRGX Global Inc (NASDAQ:PRGX), and C&F Financial Corp (NASDAQ:CFFI). This group of stocks' market valuations resemble MNTX's market valuation.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position CHMG,3,15099,0 MVBF,2,19079,-2 PRGX,6,64974,-1 CFFI,2,10274,0 Average,3.25,27357,-0.75 [/table]

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $27 million. That figure was $10 million in MNTX's case. PRGX Global Inc (NASDAQ:PRGX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand MVB Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:MVBF) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX) 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. In this regard PRGX might be a better candidate to consider a long position.

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

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