Last updated 2/24/23
Summary:
Hedge fund holdings can help you discover new investment ideas
See further detailed analysis of all 36 funds from Q4 in our forum which includes the Top 20s from all followed hedge funds, and details on these Top 20 companies involving market cap, quarterly moves, and upcoming readouts, all in 2 amazing Google Sheets! See this analysis after subscribing, learn more here!
Want added conviction on your current investments? See how many of the funds hold your favorite companies? Find out in our Hedge Fund Screener tool here
New Tables added 2/24/23 with additional hedge fund data!
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Intro
At BPIQ we track quarterly 13F filings for some of the largest, best known biotech hedge funds. Several Q4 2022 13F filings have already been made available, and all must be made available by tomorrow, February 14, 2023. This quarter we will analyze 35 funds, which we believe are all life science hedge funds. This includes 24 additional funds from Q2 where we focused on EcoR1, RA Capital, Baker Brothers, Perceptive Advisors, Orbimed Partners, Opaleye, NEA Management, Logos, Casdin, Vivo, Cormorant, and Redmile Group. Like most biotech investors, most of these funds had a tough year in 2021 (See "Hedge Funds Suffer Big Losses in Biotech Rout" (The Wall Street Journal 12/6/21)) and likely have had troubles in the 1st half of 2022, as headwinds from the biotech sector pushed hard against even the most experienced biotech investors. However, biotech's resurgence since mid-June 2022 has probably led to a resurgence into the biotech funds as well.
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Want added conviction on your current investments? See how many of the funds hold your favorite companies? Find out in our Hedge Fund Screener tool here
See below for the holdings of three of the first hedge funds to announce Q4 2022 data.
See our Q4 2022 Biotech Hedge Fund forum post HERE, which discusses detailed info about each fund and link's to our online Sheet with the holdings for each fund. Figure 1 shows the BPIQ Hedge Fund search tool - which you can get full access to as a subscriber! By signing up for a free account you have access to search three hedge funds: Baker Bros, Perceptive, and Orbimed.
Sign up for free HERE to access those 3 hedge funds on our search tool AND receive a free PDF with extra Q4 hedge fund analysis!
Figure 1. BPIQ Hedge Fund search tool
Top 20 Holdings
We analyzed the Top 20 holdings in all top biotech funds to find which tickers are top holdings of multiple biotech hedge funds (Table 1). We also determined the Top 20 occurrences for these tickers in Q3 to compare. ISEE, VRNA and HZNP are the only holdings in the Top 20 of 11 funds. VRDN and MRTX are the only holdings in the Top 20 of 10 funds. KDNY, MDGL, and SRPT are in the Top 20 in 8 hedge funds. CRNX, COGT, PCVX, RXDX, ARGX, CYTK, ASND, CLDX, SNDX, APLS, SGEN, XENE, DICE, and RYTM are held in the Top 20 of 6 or 7 of the hedge funds at the end of Q4.
Many of the top held tickers this past quarter were also seen in many Top 20s in Q3. See Table 1 for a list of these top held tickers as well as the number of Top 20 hedge funds they were in for Q3 2022.
Then see Tables 2a for some of the Top 20s in the 36 Hedge Funds we have analyzed.
Table 1. Top occurrences of companies in Top 20 of Hedge Funds*
*Note that the Q3 2022 numbers were from 35 followed hedge funds, we added the additional Deep Track hedge fund this quarter
Table 2a. Top 20 stock positions held by biotech hedge funds in Q4 2022**
**Tables 2a and 2b are color coded based on the prevalence of the ticker in the hedge funds Top 20s. Darker green colored cells have the highest occurrence (with the darkest green showing 11 occurrences) and lighter yellow colored cells have less occurrences (with the lightest yellow showing 5 occurrences). Refer to Table 1 to see specific numbers of occurrences for each ticker.
See our forum for the second half of the hedge funds and their Top 20s.
We analyzed returns from each of these companies since the end of Q3, the end of Q4, and during Q4 to determine if there was a pattern in returns of these commonly held ticker. See Table 3 for returns from these tickers. Also included in Table 3 is info on the company enterprise value, quarters of cash on hand, and short term investments.
Table 3. Returns from each quarter in Top 20 holdings
Returns are current as of 2/16/23
See our forum for Table 4 which includes top held ticker indications, trial stages, and if they are upcoming Big Movers.
In Q4 the average return from the companies in 5 or more hedge fund Top 20s was 41% and the average return from companies in 6 or more hedge fund Top 20s was 43%. The return from XBI in Q4 was 5%.
To see all 36 fund Top 20s in Q4 see our forum post. Top 20s for Q4 will come soon after all companies have reported!
CLICK HERE to sign up for our FREE informative emails for biotech investors and you will get instant access to the full pro version of this article with deeper analysis of the holdings of top biotech hedge funds that will give you more investment ideas. Plus, this free sign up gives you instant access to our free catalyst calendar, pipeline screener, hedge fund search engine + more.
This article is NOT legal, investment or tax advice. Please do your own diligence before making any investments.
Article history:
11/17/22 first posted (FS)
2/24/23 last updated
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