According to a separate Form 4 filing, Stephen Dubois’s Camber Capital Management snapped up 791,565 shares of Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ:SQNM) so far this week at a weighted average price of $1.30. After the recent purchases, the healthcare-focused fund holds 16.19 million shares in the life sciences company. The company mainly develops and markets molecular diagnostics testing services targeting the women’s health market. Specifically, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Sequenom Laboratories, offers molecular-based laboratory developed tests, with a primary focus on prenatal testing. The company’s financial performance is correlated with the total number of accessions (each test performed is related to a patient specimen that is commonly called accession), which has been on a steady decline recently. The number of accessions dropped by 8,400 or 5.7% for the nine-month period that ended September 30, relative to the same period of the last year. At the same time, Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ:SQNM)’s management anticipates that the number of accessions will continue to decline in the upcoming quarters, as other companies choose to use their own noninvasive prenatal testing.
The stock is down by 63% so far in 2015, and it is not entirely clear what can stop the stock’s downfall. The number of smart money investors with positions in the company declined to 11 from 13 during the September quarter, while the value of these positions dropped to $47.94 million from $79.94 million. Funds tracked by Insider Monkey owned 23.10% of the company’s outstanding common stock on September 30. William Leland Edwards’ Palo Alto Investors held its position in Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ:SQNM) unchanged during the third quarter at 10.02 million shares.
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Looks like billionaire activist Carl Icahn can’t stop buying shares of Cheniere Energy Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG). As stated in a Form 4 filing, the activist investor purchased a 30,819 share-block on Tuesday at a price of $41.84 per unit, lifting his overall holding in Cheniere to 32.68 million shares. The sustained supply glut of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has put significant weight on prices over the past year or so, with the price of Asian LNG declining to $7.20 per million British thermal units. At the same time, the prices of LNG spot cargoes that arrived in Japan (the largest buyer of LNG in the world) last month averaged $7.50 per mmBtu, which compares with the average of $7.90 per mmBtu recorded in October. Meanwhile, shares of Cheniere Energy Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG) are 38% in the red year-to-date, but Carl Icahn keeps buying more stock. Although it is hard to predict when the LNG supply glut will start to fade away, the reputable investor has the time and capital at his disposal to endure the current low commodity-price environment.
A total of 62 hedge funds from our database had positions in Cheniere at the end of the third quarter, down from 76 funds a quarter earlier. Similarly, the value hedge funds’ investments in the company declined to $7.12 billion from $9.01 billion. Even so, these top money managers stockpiled a whopping 62.30% of the company’s shares at the end of September. Aside from Carl Icahn, billionaire Seth Klarman of Baupost Group also holds a sizable stake in Cheniere Energy Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG), which is comprised of 22.67 million shares as of September 30.
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