Billionaire Steven Cohen Buys Stake in the Week’s Hottest Biotech Stock, Plus 3 Other Moves

According to a new Schedule 13G filing, Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management L.P. initiated a stake of 2.86 million shares in Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:CPXX) on March 14, which accounts for 8.3% of the company’s total number of outstanding shares. The public filing does not reveal the prices at which the aforementioned stake was purchased, but the bullish move most likely comes after the clinical stage biopharmaceutical company announced positive results from the Phase III trial of Vyxeos Liposome for Injection in patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (otherwise Point72 would yet again fall under the scrutiny of the SEC for possible illegal insider trading, given such an improbable occurrence as taking a large stake just before an announcement that sent the stock up by 350% the next day).

Shares of Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:CPXX) have skyrocketed by more than 450% since the beginning of the year, thanks to the recently-announced positive trial results. Vyzeos, also known as CPX-351, is a liposomal formulation of cytarabine and daunorubicin designed to treat acute myeloid leukemia. There were three hedge funds in our database that had stakes in the biopharmaceutical company at the end of the fourth quarter of 2015, compared to only one fund registered at the end of the third quarter, so let’s take a look at the handful of funds that managed to make big gains on their investments in Celator Pharmaceuticals (assuming that they did not jettison their stakes before March 14). Ori Hershkovitz’s Nexthera Capital, Hal Mintz’s Sabby Capital and First Eagle Investment Management initiated new stakes in Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:CPXX) during the December quarter. The latter investment firm owned 612,600 shares of the company at the end of December.

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