Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Kura Oncology, Inc. (KURA)

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 Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA).

Is Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) the right pick for your portfolio? The best stock pickers were taking a pessimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions went down by 3 recently. Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) was in 35 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 43. Our calculations also showed that KURA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

Lei Zhang of Hillhouse Capital Management

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 look at the latest hedge fund action regarding Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -8% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 34 hedge funds with a bullish position in KURA a year ago. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor), managed by Behzad Aghazadeh, holds the largest position in Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA). Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor) has a $74.9 million position in the stock, comprising 1.2% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by EcoR1 Capital, managed by Oleg Nodelman, which holds a $69.8 million position; the fund has 2.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism encompass Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors, Aaron Cowen’s Suvretta Capital Management and James E. Flynn’s Deerfield Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Commodore Capital allocated the biggest weight to Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA), around 4.94% of its 13F portfolio. EcoR1 Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.43 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to KURA.

Since Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) has witnessed falling interest from the smart money, we can see that there were a few money managers that slashed their full holdings in the third quarter. Interestingly, Lei Zhang’s Hillhouse Capital Management dropped the biggest investment of the 750 funds watched by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $13.6 million in stock, and Jeffrey Jay and David Kroin’s Great Point Partners was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $10.4 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Vine Energy Inc. (NYSE:VEI), The Chefs Warehouse, Inc (NASDAQ:CHEF), Radius Global Infrastructure, Inc. (NASDAQ:RADI), Genetron Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GTH), MaxCyte Inc. (NASDAQ:MXCT), Coherus Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:CHRS), and Scholastic Corp (NASDAQ:SCHL). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to KURA’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $172 million. That figure was $451 million in KURA’s case. Radius Global Infrastructure, Inc. (NASDAQ:RADI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Genetron Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GTH) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Kura Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ:KURA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for KURA is 76.4. 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 KURA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on KURA were disappointed as the stock returned -25.5% 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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