Baron Discovery Fund recently published its fourth-quarter commentary – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the fourth quarter of 2020, the Baron Discovery Fund returned 25.54% (institutional shares). This was 4.07% lower than the Russell 2000 Growth Index, the Fund’s primary benchmark index. You should check out Baron Discovery Fund’s top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.
In the Q4 2020 Investor Letter, Baron Discovery Fund highlighted a few stocks and Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) is one of them. Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) is a pharmaceutical company. In the last three months, Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) stock gained 33.1% and on February 2nd it had a closing price of $34.50. Here is what Baron Discovery Fund said:
“Esperion Therapeutics, Inc. is a pharmaceutical company that is launching a new drug in the cardiovascular space, bempodaic acid (BA), for patients with elevated LDL cholesterol levels. Upon its approval in February 2020, BA and BA plus ezetimibe (a combination drug), were the first non-statin-based oral LDL lowering drugs launched in a very long time. The drug is effective – BA has been shown to lower LDL cholesterol by as much as 30% to 40% on its own (for the combination version of BA). The company estimates that there are nearly 18 million patients in the U.S. alone who have not achieved their LDL lowering goals, many of whom are not on statins at all (potentially due to adverse reactions). Underperformance in the fourth quarter was the same as it was in the third quarter. The company launched its drugs right into the teeth of the COVID pandemic, and it was forced to pivot to virtual retailing, which no doubt hurt the initial uptake. As the pandemic recedes, we believe the company will get much better traction, and our diligence indicates that the drug is working as advertised. We maintain conviction in the company given the millions of potential patients suffering from elevated cardiovascular risk markers who cannot take a generic statin, do not want to use an injectable drug, or are otherwise in need of alternative options.”
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Baron Discovery Fund has been a long time Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) bull. In December 2020, we shared Baron Discovery Fund’s bullish ESPR’s thesis in this article.
In Q3 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) stock decreased by about 11% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers don’t believe in ESPR’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 216% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 121 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
