Wasatch Micro Cap Value Fund recently released its Q4 2020 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download here. The fund posted a return of 26.1% for the quarter, underperforming its benchmark, the Russell Microcap Index which returned 31.4% in the same quarter. You should check out Wasatch’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, the 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 10.4% and on April 1st it had a closing price of $28.71. Here is what the fund said:
“Another significant detractor was Esperion Therapeutics, Inc. (ESPR), a developer of oral therapies for people with elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C, or “bad cholesterol”). Esperion’s recently approved flagship medications, Nexletol® and Nexlizet,™ are intended to increase the effectiveness of statins and other cholesterol-lowering drugs in high-risk patients. However, sales of these new products have been hampered as patients fearful of contracting Covid19 postponed routine physicals and other nonurgent appointments during which the medications might have been prescribed. Given the many challenges involved, uptake of the new drugs has been encouraging in our view. We remain optimistic about Esperion’s long-term prospects and continue to own it in the Fund. Having said that, we’re keeping the position size relatively small because we always take a cautious approach to biotech stocks and we’d ideally like to see the company’s balance sheet in somewhat better condition.”
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In February, we published an article revealing that Baron Discovery Fund is betting on Esperion Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ESPR) stock.
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 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 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. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.