Andreas Halvorsen (Trades, Portfolio), founding partner and chief investment officer of Viking Partners, disclosed this week his firm established a stake in Zentalis Pharmaceuticals LLC ZNTL according to GuruFocus Real-Time Picks, a Premium feature.
Prior to starting Viking, Halvorsen worked as senior managing director and equities director at Julian Robertson (Trades, Portfolio)’s Tiger Management. According to its website, Viking employs a research-intensive, long-term-focused investing approach. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm invests in companies based on a thorough assessment of the business models and fundamentals of companies, the quality of management teams and the trends of cyclical and secular industries.
Viking has not released its complete first-quarter portfolio as the deadline is 45 days after the quarter ends per Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. As of the December 2019 13-F filing, the portfolio contains 66 stocks, of which 18 represent new holdings. The top three sectors in terms of weight are health care, technology and consumer cyclical, with weights of 31.96%, 20.53% and 18.20%.
Guru buys shares as company goes public
Viking purchased 4,443,284 shares of Zentalis, or 12.88% of the company’s 34.5 million shares outstanding. The shares, which traded around $23.75 on the April 7 transaction date, occupy 0.49% of the equity portfolio.
Zentalis, a clinical-stage biotech company based in New York and San Diego, engages in the discovery and development of small-molecule therapeutics, targeting fundamental biological pathways of cancers. The company’s product candidates include ZN-c5, an oral treatment for breast cancer, and ZN-c3, a treatment for solid tumors. The company announced on April 7 it completed its initial public offering of 10.557 million shares of common stock at a price of $18 per share.
Company cash and debt position
According to GuruFocus, Zentalis’ cash-to-debt ratio of 105.53 outperforms 74.73% of global competitors while its debt-to-equity ratio of 0.01 outperforms 86.84% of global biotech companies. These two metrics suggest good financial strength.
See also
Halvorsen’s major health care holdings as of the latest portfolio filing include Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. ADPT, Anthem Inc. ANTM, BridgeBio Pharma Inc. BBIO and Boston Scientific Corp. BSX.
Disclosure: No positions.
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