Office Depot (ODP), Valeant (VRX) Among 5 of the Day’s Big Winners

It’s a red day for the markets, with all major U.S. indexes down, along with crude oil and gold. However, a few stocks are registering important gains in the early afternoon. Among them we can count Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:CPXX), Office Depot Inc (NASDAQ:ODP), Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFFX), Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX), and Cerulean Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:CERU). Let’s take a look into the events driving these surges, and wee what the hedge funds in our database think about the companies involved.

Our research determined that following the small-cap stocks, that hedge funds are collectively bullish on, can help a smaller investor beat the S&P 500 by around 95 basis points per month (see more details here).

Let’s start with Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:CPXX), a small cap clinical-stage biopharmaceutical that is up by more than 17.75% in the early afternoon hours. The gains come just over a week after shares gained 432% on March 15, driven by promising results from a phase 3 trial for its cancer drug, Vyxeos. The stock has continued to rise since on management’s plans to file for regulatory approval of the drug later this year. Finally, what sent the stock even higher today was the announcement of an underwritten public offering of 4 million shares of common stock, at $9.50 per share. The company expects net proceeds to reach approximately $38 million, before fees. And, while it is true that the offer is dilutive for shareholders, it also provides the company with a more sound financial condition and it seems like investors are greatly valuing this.

Among the funds that we track, only three were long Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:CPXX) at the end of the fourth quarter of 2015. The largest stake was the one held by First Eagle Investment Management, comprising 612,600 shares worth more than $1 million.

Next up is Office Depot Inc (NASDAQ:ODP), which is trading up by almost 1.5% after a Wall Street Journal article assured that the government’s case against the company’s Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS)’s acquisition “has an Achilles heel.” The government argues that tying up the last two national office-supply chains would destroy competition. However, back in 2013, it approved the merger of Office Depot and OfficeMax based on the companies providing data that showed that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was still a viable competitor. Now, Office Depot and Staples are playing that card again and it will be hard for the government to argue around it. Encouraged by the article, the market sent Office Depot’s stock up on Wednesday.

Office Depot Inc (NASDAQ:ODP) had the support of 46 firms among those we track at the end of the fourth quarter. Their combined stakes accounted for more than 20% of the company’s total shares. Among them is Jeffrey Smith’s Starboard Value LP, which disclosed ownership of 4.48 million shares of the company as of December 31, and had greatly increased that stake by March 7, to 25.04 million shares.

Three of the day’s hottest stocks are covered on the next page.