Twitter, Ulta, Metlife, and More: Here’s Why These Five Stocks Are in the Spotlight

Although there is still a fair amount of uncertainty over President-elect Donald Trump’s policies, Wall Street doesn’t seem concerned, at least at the moment. Perhaps due to the thought of upcoming tax cuts and the repatriation of foreign profits, all three index futures are higher this morning.

Among the stocks that are trending on Thursday are Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ:NVAX), Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA), U.S. Silica Holdings Inc (NYSE:SLCA), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), and Metlife Inc (NYSE:MET). Let’s find out why the spotlight is shining on each of the five and see what successful hedge funds think of them.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 750 hedge funds and institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on, can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year. The key is to focus on the small-cap picks of these funds, which are usually less followed by the broader market and allow for larger price inefficiencies (see the details).

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Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ:NVAX) shares are down by almost 16% this morning after the company announced that it will immediately cut 30% of its workforce and incur a one-time restructuring expense of $3 million-to-$4 million. Due to the charge, Novavax’s management anticipates a reduction in cash burn of between $70 million and $100 million in 2017, relative to 2016. Given the market’s reaction, it seems that traders were anticipating a more sizable labor force cut. In addition, Novavax reported a third quarter loss of $0.24 per share, topping Wall Street’s estimate of a loss of $0.26 per share. Julian Baker and Felix Baker’s Baker Bros. Advisors was long roughly 2.38 million shares of Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ:NVAX) at the end of the second quarter.

Traders are watching Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) after Rupesh Parikh of Oppenheimer reiterated his ‘Outperform’ rating and $300 price target on the stock. Seeing as shares of the stock are down by around 11% since the day after the company’s latest analyst day, Parikh thinks that shares are close to bottom given Ulta’s competitive fundamentals and the impending holiday season. Of course, whether the market agrees and will prove Parikh right is unknown. 36 funds in our database owned $2.05 billion in Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) positions at the end of June, which accounted for 13.50% of the float.

On the next page we’ll examine the latest happenings concerning US Silica Holdings, Twitter, and Metlife.