In this piece, we will take a look at the five biotechnology stocks to buy according to Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management. If you want to learn more about the billionaire hedge fund executive, then take a look at 10 Biotech Stocks to Buy Today According to Ken Fisher.
5. Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)
Fisher Asset Management’s Stake Value: $148 million
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s 13F Portfolio: 0.08%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 83
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) is an American healthcare company that develops several kinds of pharmaceutical products which also include those developed through biotechnology. The firm’s vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus is one such example, as it uses novel modified ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology to stimulate antibody production against the virus.
Fisher Asset Management held 2.5 million Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) shares by the end of last year’s fourth quarter, enabling it to hold a $148 million stake that represented 0.08% of its investment portfolio. Insider Monkey’s survey of 924 hedge funds for the same time period revealed that 83 had also invested in the company.
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) reported $23 billion in revenue and $1.08 in non-GAAP EPS for its fourth fiscal quarter, missing analyst revenue estimates but beating them for EPS. Morgan Stanley set a $55 price target for the company in May 2022, as it initiated coverage for the healthcare sector.
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)’s largest shareholder is Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management which owns 10 million shares worth $608 million.
ClearBridge Investments mentioned the company in its fourth quarter 2021 investor letter. 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 the Pfizer 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 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.
