Hedge Funds Are Piling Into BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (BBIO)

Is BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic was previously 27. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with BBIO positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that BBIO 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a peek at the latest hedge fund action surrounding BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO).

Ole Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 4% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BBIO 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.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, holds the largest position in BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO). Viking Global has a $1.2477 billion position in the stock, comprising 3.5% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Joseph Edelman of Perceptive Advisors, with a $363.6 million position; the fund has 5.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Lei Zhang’s Hillhouse Capital Management, Bihua Chen’s Cormorant Asset Management and Ting Jia’s Octagon Capital Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Octagon Capital Advisors allocated the biggest weight to BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO), around 6.57% of its 13F portfolio. Perceptive Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 5.28 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BBIO.

Consequently, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, established the biggest position in BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO). Fisher Asset Management had $26.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $1.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new BBIO positions are Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and David Harding’s Winton Capital Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO). We will take a look at Post Holdings Inc (NYSE:POST), Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE:M), Casey’s General Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:CASY), Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA), Woori Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:WF), Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS), and BlackLine, Inc. (NASDAQ:BL). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to BBIO’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $682 million. That figure was $2119 million in BBIO’s case. Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE:M) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Woori Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:WF) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BBIO is 69.3. 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 BBIO wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BBIO were disappointed as the stock returned -20.6% 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.