Do Hedge Funds Love Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (APLS)?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 867 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS) based on those filings.

Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS) was in 30 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 35. APLS has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. There were 31 hedge funds in our database with APLS positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that APLS 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 we’re going to take a look at the key hedge fund action regarding Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS).

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -3% from the second quarter of 2021. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards APLS over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor) held the most valuable stake in Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS), which was worth $164.8 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $61.3 million worth of shares. Octagon Capital Advisors, Logos Capital, and Cormorant Asset Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Octagon Capital Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS), around 12.95% of its 13F portfolio. Logos Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.45 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to APLS.

Because Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS) has witnessed falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there were a few fund managers that decided to sell off their positions entirely last quarter. Intriguingly, Lei Zhang’s Hillhouse Capital Management said goodbye to the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth close to $185.2 million in stock, and Julian Baker and Felix Baker’s Baker Bros. Advisors was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $143.6 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds last quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Cytek Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:CTKB), TransAlta Corporation (NYSE:TAC), Cactus, Inc. (NYSE:WHD), Herman Miller, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLHR), MakeMyTrip Limited (NASDAQ:MMYT), Vertex, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERX), and United Community Banks Inc (NASDAQ:UCBI). This group of stocks’ market values resemble APLS’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $141 million. That figure was $510 million in APLS’s case. Herman Miller, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLHR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cactus, Inc. (NYSE:WHD) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for APLS is 79.7. 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 returned 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th but still managed to beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on APLS as the stock returned 27.7% since the end of September (through 11/30) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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