We recently published a list of 11 Best Performing Healthcare Stocks to Buy Now. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO) stands against other best performing healthcare stocks to buy now.

Trump’s Healthcare Executive Order Brings a Win

On April 15, CNBC reported that President Trump’s healthcare-focused executive order brought in a win for the sector. Trump directed his health department to collaborate with Congress to revamp a law allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. The announcement seeks to bring a change that the pharmaceutical company has lobbied for. Since the negotiation process is included in legislation, Trump’s executive order cannot implement the change itself. However, it directs Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to join hands with Congress and change it.

CNBC reported that drug makers have been working to delay the eligibility timeline for small-molecule drugs to be available for price negotiations by four years. This typically includes pills and most medications. This goes hand in hand with the 13-year wait until more complex biotech drugs are eligible for Medicare price negotiations.

Trump’s wide-ranging executive order also focuses on slashing healthcare costs. It comes a day after the administration instituted a national security report on the pharma industry. CNBC called the report “a precursor to sector-specific tariffs.”

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Medicare’s negotiating powers have been a subject of contention, as drug makers have opined that they would suppress innovation and have rallied against the time frame for negotiation eligibility for most drugs. The law now allows the government to negotiate prices for drugs with no competition, which includes complex biotech or biologic medications after 13 years on the market, but 9 years for their administration as capsules and pills.

Although they did not provide specifics, White House officials told reporters that other changes to the negotiation process would yield more savings than those attained during the first round under the Biden administration. While the Biden administration negotiated price cuts as steep as 79% for the first ten most expensive drugs to the Medicare program, the Trump administration would negotiate prices for the following 15 medications. This includes Pfizer’s cancer drugs Ibrance and Xtandi, as well as Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss treatments Ozempic and Wegovy.

Our Methodology

We used Finviz to screen healthcare stocks and selected the best performers based on their year-to-date (YTD) performance, as of May 9, 2025. We also included the number of hedge fund holders for each stock as of Q4 2024. We sourced the hedge fund sentiment data from Insider Monkey’s database. The list is sorted in ascending order of year-to-date performance.

Why do we care about what hedge funds do? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO)

YTD Performance: 43.24%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 41

Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO) is a clinical-stage company that develops transformational treatments for patients with serious metabolic diseases that have high unmet medical needs, such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), for which no approved therapies exist.

The company’s primary product is efruxifermin (EFX), which treats MASH and is undergoing phase 3 of clinical trials. Efruxifermin (EFX) is an analog of fibroblast growth factor 21, an endogenously expressed hormone that regulates carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins while offering protection against cellular stress.

Bank of America Securities analyst Jason Zemansky maintained a Buy rating on Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO) on May 6 and set a price target of $63.00.

Clear Street also initiated coverage of the stock on April 30 with a Buy rating and $49 price target. In a research note, the analyst told investors that Akero Therapeutics, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AKRO) sole clinical asset and FGF21R agonist, Efruxifermin, holds “best-in-class potential” for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis treatment. It also has a high probability of success in ongoing Phase 3 trials, amassing further optimistic investor sentiment. The analyst also reasoned that Efruxifermin’s “superior efficacy” compared to its competitors in the F4 cirrhosis market “establishes clear differentiation.”

Overall, AKRO ranks 6th on our list of the best performing healthcare stocks to buy now. While we acknowledge the potential for AKRO as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AKRO but trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

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