Did The Smart Money Get Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (IOVA) Right?

Technology stocks had a lousy start to 2022. QQQ lost 9% of its value in January. Pandemic winners are getting crushed while energy stocks are surging. Roblox lost 36%, Moderna lost 33%, and Carvana and Shopify lost 30% of their values in January. We aren’t certain about the bubbly technology stocks that trade for ridiculously high multiples of their revenues, but we believe top hedge fund stocks will deliver positive returns for the rest of the year. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) at the end of the third quarter and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) was in 33 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 43. Our calculations also showed that IOVA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. With all of this in mind let’s check out the recent hedge fund action encompassing Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA).

Do Hedge Funds Think IOVA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 33 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 10% from the second quarter of 2021. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards IOVA over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) was held by ARK Investment Management, which reported holding $287.3 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Perceptive Advisors with a $283.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor), OrbiMed Advisors, and Farallon Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Frazier Healthcare Partners allocated the biggest weight to Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA), around 5.28% of its 13F portfolio. Ghost Tree Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 5.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IOVA.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Senator Investment Group, managed by Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin, established the most valuable position in Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA). Senator Investment Group had $12.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Egen Atkinson and Michael Kramarz’s Commodore Capital also made a $8.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new IOVA positions are Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker’s Woodline Partners, Lawrence Hawkins’s Prosight Capital, and Behzad Aghazadeh’s Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor).

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR), CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD), Veoneer, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNE), Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX), Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG), and First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to IOVA’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $408 million. That figure was $1439 million in IOVA’s case. Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IOVA is 81. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 29.6% in 2021 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately, IOVA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on IOVA were disappointed as the stock returned -32.5% since the end of the third quarter (through 1/31) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as all of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.

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