Here’s Why Artisan Partners Remains Optimistic in Genmab A/S (GMAB)

Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Mid Cap Fund’ second quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 10.45% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTMX, 10.46% by its Advisor Class: APDMX, and 10.52% by its Institutional Class: APHMX, in the second quarter of 2021, all below the Russell Midcap® Growth Index that delivered an 11.07% return, but outperforming the Russell Midcap® Index that was up by 7.50% for the same period. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their top bets for 2021.

In the Q2 2021 investor letter of Artisan Partners, the fund mentioned Genmab A/S (NASDAQ: GMAB) and discussed its stance on the firm. Genmab A/S is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based software company with a $31.8 billion market capitalization. GMAB delivered a 20.03% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 39.36%. The stock closed at $48.71 per share on September 2, 2021.

Here is what Artisan Partners has to say about Genmab A/S in its Q2 2021 investor letter:

Genmab is a creator and developer of human antibody products for the treatment of life-threatening and debilitating diseases. Shares have been volatile this year amid a binding arbitration with Johnson & Johnson to decide key aspects of royalty payments related to nextgeneration multiple myeloma drug, Darzalex FASPROTM. Last quarter, we indicated share weakness in February and early March seemed to overstate the potential negative outcome, especially relative to the additional growth opportunities within Genmab’s promising R&D pipeline. That potential was on display in Q2 when the company reported positive data for its bispecific antibody Epcoritamab, a new drug being developed with AbbVie to treat lymphoma. Bispecific antibodies are recombinant antibodies aimed at two biological targets simultaneously and are an important emerging technology area. The company expects to report further clinical trial updates later this year for another bispecific antibody it has developed with partner BioNTech. This new drug is expected to treat patients with metastatic or unresectable malignant solid tumors who are not candidates for standard therapy. We believe Genmab is establishing itself as one of the clear leaders in bispecifics, which increases our optimism about the long-term value of the company’s R&D platform.”

software

Photo by Hack Capital on Unsplash

Based on our calculations, Genmab A/S (NASDAQ: GMAB) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. GMAB was in 9 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 13 funds in the previous quarter. Genmab A/S (NASDAQ: GMAB) delivered a 19.15% return in the past 3 months.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

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