Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Small Cap Fund’ fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -6.99% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTSX, -6.93% by its Advisor Class: APDSX, and -6.93% by its Institutional Class: APHSX for the fourth quarter of 2021, all below the Russell 2000® Growth Index that delivered a 0.01% return and the Russell 2000® Index that was up by 2.14% for the same period. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Artisan Small Cap Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned argenx SE (NASDAQ: ARGX) and discussed its stance on the firm. argenx SE is a Netherlands-based biotechnology company with a $14.1 billion market capitalization. ARGX delivered a -22.60% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -19.55%. The stock closed at $271.04 per share on February 23, 2022.
Here is what Artisan Small Cap Fund has to say about argenx SE in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“Argenx is a commercial stage biotechnology company with an approved, first and potentially best-in-class therapy (FcRn) for autoimmune diseases—a potential $10 billion+ opportunity. The company received positive news in December, winning its first FDA approval for efgartigimod, which treats myasthenia gravis—a chronic neuromuscular condition—which we believe could generate up to $3 billion in sales for Argenx. In addition to the myasthenia gravis treatment, efgartigimod is in development for several additional autoimmune diseases with possibility for more diseases to be announced over time. We believe several of these have been significantly de-risked, positioning the company to expand the revenue opportunities for the product. Finally, the company’s earlierstage pipeline product, ARGX-117 (C2), has shown promising data in several severe autoimmune diseases. Like efgartigimod, ARGX-117 (C2) has broad disease application potential. Biotech stocks’ performance is highly correlated with the commercial launch of new drugs or the release of data validating clinical trials, and we see a highconviction scenario where shares of Argenx could move higher in 2022—phase 3 ITP (IV delivery) data is expected in 1H (~$1 billion market opportunity), and a successful study would further validate the company’s approach to shift clinical risk to earlier phase 2 studies.”
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Our calculations show that argenx SE (NASDAQ: ARGX) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. ARGX was in 30 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 28 funds in the previous quarter. argenx SE (NASDAQ: ARGX) delivered a -2.12% return in the past 3 months.
In September2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on ARGX in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
