Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global initiated in $ONTY

Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global initiated a brand new position in Oncothyreon Inc. (ONTY). On Sep 26th, Viking Global revealed in a 13G filing that the firm had purchased 2.96 million shares of ONTY, corresponding to a 7.1% passive stake. Viking Global previously didn’t own any shares in ONTY, and it passed the 5% threshold on September 14th. Since then ONTY was wavering in narrow channel between $6 and $7.5, Andreas Halvorsen probably made most of his purchases at around $6.

Among the more than 300 hedge funds we tracked in the second quarter, seven had ONTY in their portfolios. Samuel Isaly’s Orbimed Advisors owned significantly more shares than the other hedge funds, with nearly 1.4 million shares, corresponding to 3.6% of ONTY’s outstanding shares. If no large transaction was made after June, Viking Global is most probably ONTY’s No.1 hedge fund stakeholder.

Viking Global was launched by Norwegian Halvorsen at the end of 1999 with former Tiger employees David Ott and Brian Olson. The firm is a long/short global equity fund with a bottom-up stock picking approach. It returned an astonishing 89% after fees in its first full year. The firm had a 13F portfolio of nearly $12 billion in the second quarter, with most of the investments focused on Services, Financial, Healthcare, and Basic Materials. (see more)

Oncothyreon Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company providing therapeutic products for the treatment of cancer. The company mainly operates in United States, Canada, and Europe.