Hedge Funds Are Betting On Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (IOVA)

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA).

Is Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) a worthy investment right now? Money managers were in an optimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 3 recently. Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) was in 33 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 43. Our calculations also showed that IOVA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 30 hedge funds in our database with IOVA holdings at the end of June.

Samuel Isaly, Founder of Orbimed Advisors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a peek at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA).

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 33 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 10% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 40 hedge funds with a bullish position in IOVA a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, ARK Investment Management was the largest shareholder of Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA), with a stake worth $287.3 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing ARK Investment Management was Perceptive Advisors, which amassed a stake valued at $283.3 million. Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor), OrbiMed Advisors, and Farallon Capital were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Frazier Healthcare Partners allocated the biggest weight to Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA), around 5.28% of its 13F portfolio. Ghost Tree Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 5.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IOVA.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Senator Investment Group, managed by Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin, created the most outsized position in Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA). Senator Investment Group had $12.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Egen Atkinson and Michael Kramarz’s Commodore Capital also initiated a $8.9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker’s Woodline Partners, Lawrence Hawkins’s Prosight Capital, and Behzad Aghazadeh’s Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor).

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) but similarly valued. These stocks are Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR), CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD), Veoneer, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNE), Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX), Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG), and First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to IOVA’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $408 million. That figure was $1439 million in IOVA’s case. Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IOVA is 81. 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 gained 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and still beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately IOVA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on IOVA were disappointed as the stock returned -24.1% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/30) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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

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