Is Denali Therapeutics (DNLI) A Smart Long-Term Investment?

Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Growth Fund” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 6.56% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the fourth quarter of 2021 and 15.84% for the year. This exceeded the Fund’s primary benchmark, the Russell 2000 Growth Index (the “Benchmark”), which gained 0.01%. The S&P 500 Index, which measures the performance of publicly-traded large-cap U.S. companies, gained 11.03% during the period. For the full year, the Fund gained 20.15%, meaningfully exceeding its Benchmark, which gained 2.83%. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.

Baron Growth Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: DNLI) and discussed its stance on the firm. Denali Therapeutics Inc. is a South San Francisco, California-based biotechnology company with a $4.2 billion market capitalization. DNLI delivered a -21.86% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -48.38%. The stock closed at $34.85 per share on February 11, 2022.

Here is what Baron Growth Fund has to say about Denali Therapeutics Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“Our Disruptive Growth investments are pursuing idiosyncratic opportunities across the entirety of the global economy. Denali Therapeutics Inc. is pushing the boundaries of drug development by pursuing novel diagnostics and therapeutics in areas including neurodegenerative disease and blood cancers.”

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Our calculations show that Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: DNLI) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. DNLI was in 23 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 22 funds in the previous quarter. Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: DNLI) delivered a -31.38% return in the past 3 months.

In November 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on DNLI in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.

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