Christopher Medlock James‘ Partner Fund Management recently initiated a position in Heron Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:HRTX), together with its affiliated funds, according to a 13G form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The holding comprises over 2.01 million shares valued at $65.30 million based on the June 10 closing price, and represents about 5.7% of the $1.14 billion biotechnology company’s outstanding shares.
Founded in 2004, Partner Fund Management currently has about $5.44 billion worth of regulatory assets under its management. The San Francisco-based investment firm combines fundamental analysis with a bottom-up approach to make its investment choices, and complements its in-house research with external research. At the end of March the market value of the fund’s public equity portfolio stood at $3.63 billion and the healthcare sector represented about 55% of these holdings.
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Heron Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:HRTX) is focused on improving the therapeutic profile of injectable pharmaceuticals. Its main product candidate, SUSTOL is being developed to prevent chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). The company announced successful results for its Phase 3 study of SUSTOL at the end of May, and plans to re-submit its New Drug Application to the FDA. The drug met its primary endpoint of a statistically significant proportion of patients achieving a Complete Response as compared to the Comparator Group. The Complete Response was defined as no vomiting or rescue medications during a 24 to 120-hour period after administration of highly emetogenic chemeotherapy agents, which are responsible for causing vomiting. Moreover, Heron Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:HRTX) has also recently initiated a mid-stage study of HTX-011, which helps with the prevention of post-operative pain.
The smart money is generally staying put with Heron Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:HRTX) despite the stock showing considerable gains this year. Among the funds that we track, 18 had a total investment of $234.65 million at the end of March compared to the same number funds holding $160.83 million in shares at the end of the previous quarter. While it may seem that the investment in the company increased considerably, in fact the stock appreciated by some 41.3% during the first three months, which explains most of the hiking in the funds’ investments in the company, which were raised by about 46%. However, the stock price didn’t just stop there and the current year-to-date gains now amount to more than 220% after a monster second quarter during which shares more than doubled in value. In comparison, the specialty & generic drug manufacturers industry has ‘only’ posted average gains of 21.88% so far this year, according to Morningstar data. Recently Cowen & Company initiated coverage on Heron Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:HRTX) with an ‘Outperform’ rating and a $40 price target, which provides an upside of about 25% to the current trading level.
Kevin C. Tang‘s Tang Capital Management and Broadfin Capital managed by Kevin Kotler are the two largest investors of Heron Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:HRTX), among those that we keep track of. Their respective holdings stood at 4.92 million shares valued at $71.58 million and 2.81 million shares valued at $40.86 million, as of the end of the first trimester.
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