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.
Let’s check out two of Deerfield’s other micro-cap healthcare picks, beginning with NxStage Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTM), in which Deerfield added some 261,600 shares of during the first three months to take the holding to 5.07 million shares valued at $87.76 million. The stake represents 8% of the company’s outstanding shares and 2.84% of the fund’s portfolio value. The stock of the $969.44 million medical device company is down by more than 14% year-to-date. In its financial results for the first quarter NxStage Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTM) beat estimates for both the top and bottom lines. While the critical care revenue increased by 9%, home revenue climbed by 19%. The company was also helped by currency movements, and gross margins for System One stood at 50%. After Deerfield, Kevin Kotler’s Broadfin Capital is the largest stockholder of Antares Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:ATRS) within our database, owning 4.7 million shares valued at $12.74 million.
During the first quarter, Deerfield hiked its stake in Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:AAVL) by 31% to 2.12 million shares valued at $85.80 million. The stake constitutes 8.29% of the company’s outstanding shares. Just yesterday the stock of the $992.56 million clinical-stage biotechnology company crashed and burned as it slumped more than 50%. The trigger event involved Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:AAVL)’s drug to treat wet AMD, AVA-101, which even though it met its primary endpoint, seemed to have thickened the retinas of patients receiving the treatment as compared to the control group. Another fund with whom the news didn’t sit well is Anders Hove and Bbong Koh‘s VHCP Management, as it owned about 1.38 million shares of Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:AAVL) valued at $56.03 million on March 31.
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