Viking Global Boosts Its Stake in Illumina, Inc. (ILMN)

According to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Andreas Halvorsen’s fund Viking Global, has upped its position in Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) to almost 7.10 million shares, from around 1.7 million held at the end of the fourth quarter. In this way, Viking Global amasses 5.5% of the company’s outstanding common stock.

Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) develops, manufactures, and markets life science tools and integrated systems.

On Monday, WuXi PharmaTech (Cayman) Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:WX), a pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device R&D outsourcing company, together with Illumina announced about its acquisition of Illumina HiSeq X Ten sequencing system.

Illumina HiSeq X Ten sequencing system, “will enable WuXi PharmaTech’s clinical genomic services to expand from the current target panel, exome, and transcriptome scale sequencing to population genome scale sequencing.” With this investment WuXi PharmaTech is now equipped with the most advanced gene sequencing capability, the companies said in a statement.

For the fiscal year 2013 the company posted a 24% increase in its revenue to $1.42 billion, from $1.15 billion reported a year ago. The GAAP net income fell to $125 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, from $151 million, or $1.13 per diluted share. For the current fiscal year, Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) expects a 15% to 17% revenue growth, while the non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share are expected to be in the range of $2.00 to $2.06. The full year non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be 70.0%.

A couple of weeks ago, Daniel Bradbury, director at Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) sold 1,100 shares of the company and now holds some 9,900 shares. Mostafa Ronaghi, Senior Vice President & CTO also disposed around 10,000 shares, reducing his stake to 30,593 shares of the company.

Samuel Isaly’s Orbimed Advisors, is another hedge fund bullish on Illumina, which holds 1.6 million shares, worth $176.59 million as at the end of last year. .

Viking Global is a long/short global equity fund that follows a bottom-up stock picking approach. The fund has 5.39% of its equity portfolio invested in Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), of which it holds 10.38 million shares. It is followed by Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (NASDAQ:FOXA) a global media and entertainment company, where the fund has a stake of 30.09 million shares.

Disclosure: none

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