Allergan, Inc. (AGN) Receives Good News from Japan

Allergan plc Ordinary Shares (NYSE:AGN) received two separate pieces of good news on Tuesday. First, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare granted the company a National Marketing Authorisation for the company’s BOTOX Vista, for the treatment of crow’s feet in adult patients. That’s good news owing to the fact that Japan is a wealthy country with a substantial percentage of elderly people. Medical aesthetics is a fast growing sector in the country, with a 56% increase in the occasions of non-surgical and surgical treatments performed from 2010 to 2014. The approval should help Allergan plc Ordinary Shares (NYSE:AGN) realize more profits in the country. Secondly, the FDA accepted Allergan’s NDA for oxymetazoline HCl cream 1.0% for review. The cream is for the potential treatment of a symptom associated with rosacea, which is a chronic skin condition that affects more than 16 million people in the United States. Oxymetazoline HCL cream 1.0% should have a PDUFA date in the first half of 2017.

Heading into the second quarter of 2016, a total of 170 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a 7% rise from one quarter earlier. According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, John Paulson’s Paulson & Co has the number one position in Allergan, Inc. (NYSE:AGN), worth close to $1.45 billion, amounting to 10.7% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Dan Loeb of Third Point, with a $1.34 billion position; 12.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining peers with similar optimism comprise Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, Matthew Halbower’s Pentwater Capital Management, and Paul Singer’s Elliott Management.

The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why we will examine companies such as Sanofi SA (ADR) (NYSE:SNY), Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA), and NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) on the next page, to gather more data points.