Artisan Partners ‘Remains Quite Optimistic’ in Ascendis Pharma (ASND)

Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Mid Cap Fund’ fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -0.72% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTMX, -0.68% by its Advisor Class: APDMX, and -0.66% by its Institutional Class: APHMX, in the fourth quarter of 2021, all underperforming the Russell Midcap® Growth Index that delivered a 2.85% return, and the Russell Midcap® Index that was up by 6.44% 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 Mid Cap Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ: ASND) and discussed its stance on the firm. Ascendis Pharma A/S is a Hellerup, Denmark-based pharmaceutical products manufacturing company with a $6.3 billion market capitalization. ASND delivered a -17.48% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -27.62%. The stock closed at $111.02 per share on February 22, 2022.

Here is what Artisan Mid Cap Fund has to say about Ascendis Pharma A/S in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“Ascendis Pharma accomplished nearly everything we hoped for in 2021: getting its first medicine (Skytrofa for pediatric growth hormone deficiency) approved by the FDA, reporting compelling data for its promising second product for hypoparathyroidism and providing positive updates on several early-stage R&D programs. Despite this, the stock declined, which we attribute to general underperformance of biotech equities. We added to our position amid the weakness, and we remain quite optimistic about the stock’s long-term appreciation potential as the company brings multiple high-value medicines to patients.”

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Our calculations show that Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ: ASND) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. ASND was in 24 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 23 funds in the previous quarter. Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ: ASND) delivered a -22.24% return in the past 3 months.

In November 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on ASND 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.