The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 866 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article we look at what those investors think of Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX).
Is Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX) going to take off soon? Prominent investors were in a bullish mood. The number of bullish hedge fund positions improved by 3 lately. Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX) was in 16 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 17. Our calculations also showed that CMRX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 13 hedge funds in our database with CMRX positions at the end of the fourth quarter.
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Aaron Cowen of Suvretta Capital Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think CMRX Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 16 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 23% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CMRX over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX) was held by Point72 Asset Management, which reported holding $44.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Opaleye Management with a $43.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Renaissance Technologies, Deerfield Management, and Ikarian Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Opaleye Management allocated the biggest weight to Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX), around 6.36% of its 13F portfolio. Acuta Capital Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.46 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CMRX.
As aggregate interest increased, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, created the biggest position in Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX). Point72 Asset Management had $44.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. James E. Flynn’s Deerfield Management also initiated a $17.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Farallon Capital, Aaron Cowen’s Suvretta Capital Management, and Manfred Yu’s Acuta Capital Partners.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Caleres Inc (NYSE:CAL), Trean Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TIG), AxoGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXGN), CM Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMLF), Northfield Bancorp, Inc. (Staten Island, NY) (NASDAQ:NFBK), Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL), and Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:VNDA). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to CMRX’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAL | 18 | 63148 | 3 |
| TIG | 11 | 27832 | -3 |
| AXGN | 11 | 54726 | -3 |
| CMLF | 30 | 340530 | 15 |
| NFBK | 6 | 37059 | -3 |
| COLL | 15 | 211903 | -5 |
| VNDA | 18 | 207370 | -2 |
| Average | 15.6 | 134653 | 0.3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $135 million. That figure was $200 million in CMRX’s case. CM Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMLF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Northfield Bancorp, Inc. (Staten Island, NY) (NASDAQ:NFBK) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Chimerix Inc (NASDAQ:CMRX) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CMRX is 57.1. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 28.5% in 2021 through July 23rd and beat the market again by 10.1 percentage points. Unfortunately CMRX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CMRX were disappointed as the stock returned -24.8% since the end of March (through 7/23) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
