Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (CLDX)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Since the end of March, investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound. S&P 500 Index returned more than 50% since its bottom. In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds thought Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX) was a good investment heading into the third quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.

Is Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX) a buy right now? Hedge funds were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 19 lately. Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 14. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CLDX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). There were 3 hedge funds in our database with CLDX holdings at the end of March.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 56 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 34% through August 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Phillip Gross of Adage Capital

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost precious metals prices. So, we are checking out this lithium company which could also benefit from the electric car adoption. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. Now we’re going to analyze the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX).

What does smart money think about Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 633% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 3 hedge funds with a bullish position in CLDX a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc, managed by Mark Lampert, holds the most valuable position in Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX). Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc has a $35.6 million position in the stock, comprising 2.2% of its 13F portfolio. On Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc’s heels is Redmile Group, managed by Jeremy Green, which holds a $26 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Arsani William’s Logos Capital, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management and Neil Shahrestani’s Ikarian Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Logos Capital allocated the biggest weight to Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX), around 5.2% of its 13F portfolio. Corriente Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.87 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CLDX.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc, managed by Mark Lampert, established the largest position in Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX). Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc had $35.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jeremy Green’s Redmile Group also initiated a $26 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new CLDX investors: Arsani William’s Logos Capital, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management, and Neil Shahrestani’s Ikarian Capital.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX). These stocks are SunOpta, Inc. (NASDAQ:STKL), Franks International NV (NYSE:FI), Byline Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:BY), NGL Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NGL), Fulcrum Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FULC), Satsuma Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:STSA), and Despegar.com, Corp. (NYSE:DESP). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to CLDX’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $87 million. That figure was $254 million in CLDX’s case. Despegar.com, Corp. (NYSE:DESP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand NGL Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NGL) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CLDX is 90. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks returned 24.8% in 2020 through the end of September but still managed to beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CLDX as the stock returned 14.1% since the end of June 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.

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