Do Hedge Funds Love Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (DRNA)?

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 nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA) has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA) was in 27 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 35. There were 29 hedge funds in our database with DRNA holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that DRNA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Today there are dozens of formulas market participants put to use to appraise publicly traded companies. A couple of the most under-the-radar formulas are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can outperform the market by a significant margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Now we’re going to take a peek at the key hedge fund action encompassing Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA).

Do Hedge Funds Think DRNA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -7% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards DRNA over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker’s Woodline Partners has the biggest position in Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA), worth close to $45.4 million, comprising 1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Aquilo Capital Management, led by Marc Schneidman, holding a $43.6 million position; the fund has 7.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that hold long positions consist of Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital and Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Aquilo Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA), around 7.88% of its 13F portfolio. DAFNA Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.57 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to DRNA.

Due to the fact that Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there is a sect of hedge funds who were dropping their entire stakes heading into Q2. Interestingly, Stephen DuBois’s Camber Capital Management dumped the largest stake of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $11.6 million in stock, and Frank Fu’s CaaS Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $10.8 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA). We will take a look at Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ:PRGS), Pretium Resources Inc (NYSE:PVG), McGrath RentCorp (NASDAQ:MGRC), KAR Auction Services Inc (NYSE:KAR), Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ:GEVO), The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE), and Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to DRNA’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $111 million. That figure was $295 million in DRNA’s case. Pretium Resources Inc (NYSE:PVG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ:GEVO) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for DRNA is 76.1. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks returned 24% in 2021 through July 9th but still managed to beat the market by 6.7 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on DRNA as the stock returned 48.8% since the end of March (through 7/9) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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