According to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, James E. Flynn‘s Deerfield Management has trimmed its stake in Antares Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:ATRS) by some 748,000 shares to a total of 20.83 million shares through three of its affiliated funds. The share price received for the transactions ranged from $2.40 to $2.48. The decreased holding still represents over 13% of Antares’ outstanding common stock.
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The healthcare-focused fund Deerfield Management was launched in 1994 with $17 million in equity, which has now exceeded $5 billion. The fund invests in both public and private healthcare companies and typically has a stake in over 100 companies. At the end of the first quarter the market value of Deerfield Management’s public equity portfolio stood at $3.09 billion, up from $2.78 billion at the end of the previous quarter. Besides Antares Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:ATRS), some of the other top micro-cap health care picks of the fund include NxStage Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTM), and Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:AAVL). The fund’s top ten holdings represent more than 47% of its portfolio value and the turnover ratio for the quarter stood at 62.6%.
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Before the current sale, Deerfield boosted its stake in Antares Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:ATRS) during May by some 9.50 million shares. So far this year the stock of the $365.74 million specialty pharmaceutical company has declined by 6.22% while the medical instruments & supplies industry has risen by 4.48% during the same time period. As for Antares Pharma Inc (ATRS)’s latest quarterly financial results, the company delivered a net loss per share of $0.05, which was off the estimated target by $0.01, while revenues of $8.3 million also fell short of estimates, by $1.02 million, though they were still 60% higher than at the end of the same quarter a year ago. Deerfield is followed by Kevin Kotler‘s Broadfin Capital and Steven Boyd‘s Armistice Capital as the second and third-largest stockholders of Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:AAVL) among the funds that we track. Their respective holdings are 4.7 million shares valued at $12.74 million and 3.8 million shares valued at $10.30 million.
