Investors are Watching These 5 Biotech Stocks

1. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 84 

Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) operates as a healthcare company. Reports suggest that the company is moving forward with a plan to purchase biotech company Seagen and the two parties will be meeting to further refine the deal in late June. BMO Capital claims the deal is clouded by questions around regulation and valuation. The stock has outperformed peers in the biotech industry over the past year, registering a more than 21% increase in share price since the beginning of 2022. 

On April 12, Barclays analyst Carter Gould maintained an Overweight rating on Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) stock and raised the price target to $97 from $94, noting that the first quarter prints were “unlikely to disrupt the momentum of macro-driven rotation to larger cap biopharma”. 

Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Boston-based investment firm Arrowstreet Capital is a leading shareholder in Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) with 9.7 million shares worth more than $800 million. 

In its Q4 2021 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Other pharma companies are providing solutions as well. Merck’s antiviral pill molnupiravir is less effective than Pfizer’s, but it will be a helpful alternative for patients who cannot take Pfizer’s due to drug-drug interactions. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is also helping to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, which has less stringent storage requirements than the mRNA vaccines do.”

You can also take a peek at 10 Best Healthcare Dividend Stocks to Buy Now and 10 Dividend Stocks with Over 20 Years of Dividend Increases.

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