Baker Bros. Advisors Buys More DBV Technologies S.A. (DBVT); Visium Asset Management Goes Long On Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc. (PCRX)

Let’s now turn our attention to that other hedge fund discussed in this article, Visium Asset Management. The fund is a long/short equity hedge fund founded by Jacob Gottlieb in 2005. Even though the hedge fund was initially specializing only in healthcare stocks, its holdings are now diversified across other sectors as well. However, the fund’s main focus still remains the healthcare sector, which accounts for 55% of its entire public portfolio. According to its latest 13F filing with the SEC, Visium Asset Management oversees a public equity portfolio with a market value of $6.78 billion as of March 31, 2015.

Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:PCRX) is a specialty pharmaceutical company that focuses on the clinical and commercial development of new products that meet the needs of acute care practitioners and their patients. The company’s flagship product, EXPAREL is intended to produce postsurgical analgesia and was commercially launched in the U.S. in 2012. The shares of Pacira have dropped by nearly 27% year-to-date, but the stock has recently leveled off. Just a few days ago, the company provided some updates on its lead product and also posted its financial results for the second quarter of this year. Pacira Pharmaceutical pulled in $57 million in revenue from EXPAREL for the quarter, which marks an increase of 27% year-to-date. While the revenue growth slowed down a bit during the second quarter, some officials at the company believe that the recent challenges facing EXPAREL are transitory. Meanwhile, the company’s non-GAAP net income was $8.4 million or $0.20 per diluted share for the quarter, compared to $1.5 million or $0.04 per diluted share a year ago. From the pool of over 700 hedge funds that we track, Mariko Gordon’s Daruma Asset Management is among the largest shareholders in Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:PCRX) within our database, owning a stake of 659,998 shares as of March 31.

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