3. Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 70
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) is a New York-based biopharmaceutical company that was one of the biggest winners of the COVID-19 pandemic, as its COVID vaccines were universally approved. On September 27, Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) announced that its acquisition of Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd. (BHVN) for approximately $11.6 billion will conclude on October 3. Biohaven markets the migraine drug Nurtec ODT, which accumulated a Q1 2022 net revenue of $123.6 million.
On August 1, investment advisory Barclays raised the price target on Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) to $52 from $50 and maintained an Equal Weight rating on the shares. Analyst Carter Gould issued the ratings update.
According to Insider Monkey’s Q2 data, 70 hedge funds were long Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), compared to 79 funds in the last quarter. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management is the biggest stakeholder of the company, with 10.5 million shares worth about $554 million.
In its Q4 2021 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“While the level of general turnover abated as we progressed through 2021, it remained high in one area: post-COVID-19 recovery plays. The concept behind this investment thesis was, and still is, straightforward: with the advent of effective vaccines, the path from pandemic to endemic is just a matter of time. As this transition occurs, the estimated excess savings of over $2 trillion built up on U.S. consumer balance sheets will unlock dramatic pent-up demand for experiences, especially global travel. This investment case seemed especially compelling when Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) vaccine positively surprised markets in November 2020. As a result, we made post-COVID-19 stocks (which were trading well below our estimate of recovery value) a sizable theme within the portfolio. We understood this to be a more aggressive tilt in positioning because it required a major improvement in demand to catalyze fundamentals and drive price toward higher business values. While we accepted that recovery would not be smooth and that it would take time to deploy vaccines both domestically and globally, we decided that recovery was the logical path of least resistance and we were being well compensated for these risks.
What we did not account for, however, was vaccine hesitancy and the risk of further infection waves. As a result, the first variant wave, Delta, was a negative surprise to both the market and our team. When the risk surfaced, we immediately updated our probability-driven models and debated how we should react. The resulting conclusion was that the recovery would be delayed and that we should reduce our exposure quickly, subsequently targeting the most aggressive recovery stocks such as cruise lines. We again acted swiftly and decisively to the positive surprise that Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) had delivered a high-efficacy antiviral COVID-19 pill. This pill should greatly reduce COVID-19 severity risks globally, increasing the probability of a global travel recovery in 2022. While this is still true, the emergence of the highly mutated Omicron variant set off another infection wave which spurred us to again act quickly and further reduce our risk exposure. This back-and-forth may sound exhausting, but it highlights our compulsion to act if we determine a surprise has a large enough impact on the probabilities that power our valuation-driven investment cases.”
