The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 867 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR) based on those filings.
Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR) investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR) was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 17. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 17 hedge funds in our database with AVIR positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that AVIR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the key hedge fund action regarding Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR).
Kris Jenner of Rock Springs Capital Management
Do Hedge Funds Think AVIR Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 47% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards AVIR over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Peter Kolchinsky’s RA Capital Management has the biggest position in Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR), worth close to $190.3 million, comprising 2.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Cormorant Asset Management, led by Bihua Chen, holding a $172.8 million position; the fund has 7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish consist of Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global and Kris Jenner, Gordon Bussard, Graham McPhail’s Rock Springs Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cormorant Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR), around 7.02% of its 13F portfolio. RA Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 2.64 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AVIR.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, initiated the most outsized position in Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR). Viking Global had $58 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management also made a $11.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new AVIR positions are Christopher James’s Partner Fund Management, Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management, and Ken Greenberg and David Kim’s Ghost Tree Capital.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at FormFactor, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORM), First Majestic Silver Corp (NYSE:AG), Payoneer Global Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYO), Paymentus Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PAY), Momentive Global Inc (NASDAQ:MNTV), Nova Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVMI), and Uniti Group Inc. (NASDAQ:UNIT). All of these stocks’ market caps match AVIR’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| FORM | 15 | 139707 | -5 |
| AG | 9 | 25781 | -2 |
| PAYO | 28 | 210684 | -12 |
| PAY | 12 | 32513 | 0 |
| MNTV | 27 | 191870 | -1 |
| NVMI | 22 | 331000 | 4 |
| UNIT | 14 | 350916 | -2 |
| Average | 18.1 | 183210 | -2.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $183 million. That figure was $630 million in AVIR’s case. Payoneer Global Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand First Majestic Silver Corp (NYSE:AG) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AVIR is 82.1. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately AVIR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on AVIR were disappointed as the stock returned -77.1% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
