Alere Inc (ALR), Lion Biotech (LBIO), Genocea Biosciences Inc (GNCA), Advaxis Inc (ADXS) Among Broadfin’s Top New Health Picks

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Broadfin Capital, LLC is a New York-based hedge fund, whose $1.28-billion equity portfolio is invested in healthcare companies. Kevin Kotler, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, has founded the hedge fund in 2005. Mr. Kotler’s top picks had an outstanding performance, with two of the three largest holdings, in Horizon Pharma PLC (NASDAQ:HZNP) and Retrophin Inc (NASDAQ:RTRX), posting returns of around 100% for the first three months. In this article we will take a look at some of Mr. Kotler’s new picks, in which Broadfin disclosed new stakes in its latest 13F filing, namely Alere Inc (NYSE:ALR), Lion Biotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:LBIO), Genocea Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNCA) and Advaxis, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADXS).

Kevin Kotler

One of the main reasons for following equity portfolios of some of the best-performing hedge funds is because we believe that we can take some investment opportunities by analyzing the stocks in which these funds invest their capital. Even though the 13F filings of large investors are published with a significant delay, it does not offset opportunities to invest in the same stocks. We have been sharing the stock picks of our small-cap hedge fund strategy since the end of August 2012. Through March 11th, 2015 our small-cap strategy returned 132.0%. S&P 500 ETF (SPY) returned only 52.6% during the same period. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the market by 79.4 percentage points over this 2.5 year period. (read more details here)

As stated in the 13F filing, as of the end of March 2015, Broadfin Capital has a new position of 452,423 shares in Alere Inc. (NYSE:ALR). The new stake is valued at $22.12 million and represents 1.72% of the fund’s equity portfolio. Alere is a $4.36 billion company providing point-of-care professional diagnostics and health information solutions services. The financial results for the first quarter of 2015 showed $608.15 million in net revenues, which is 2.7% less than $625.20 million reported for the same period of 2014. Among the funds we track, Scopia Capital, managed by Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich and Iridian Asset Management, run by David Cohen and Harold Levy, have the biggest stakes in Alere Inc. (NYSE:ALR), equivalent to 5.18 million and  3.57 million shares, respectively.

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