Guru Seth Klarman (Trades, Portfolio), founder and president of Boston-based hedge fund Baupost Group, just added Atara Biotherapeutics Inc (ATRA, Financial) to his portfolio in the fourth quarter of last year, but he seems to be happy enough with it to want a second helping. He nearly doubled his stake in the first quarter of this year, apparently on the basis of Atara’s latest 13G filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), making it the 19th-largest stake in his portfolio.
Last month, Atara Biotherapeutics obtained a breakthrough therapy designation for its work on an innovative treatment for a disease associated with Epstein-Barr virus, one of eight viruses in the herpes family and one of the most common viruses in humans. Epstein-Barr is probably best known as the cause of infectious mononucleosis (informally known as the “kissing disease”), but it is also linked to specific forms of cancer, such as Hodgkin's lymphoma, Burkitt's lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma and conditions associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Atara Biotherapeutics is a San Francisco-based clinical-stage company that was founded in August 2012 to help in the development of drugs to fight serious diseases like cancer, kidney disease and other illnesses. The company took inspiration and the first part of its name from the given name of a cancer patient who died in 2012.
Klarman’s initial investment was 2,495,913 shares of Atara bought for an average price of $24.43 in December of 2014. He added 2,267,352 shares to his stake in late March, paying an average price of $41.57 per share.
In the last year, shares of Atara have sold for between $9.66 and $49.38. At the close of trading Wednesday, Atara was selling for $47.80 per share. Atara Biotherapeutics has a P/E of 0, a Price/Book of 9.3 and a Price/Sales of 0. Atara’s market cap is $1.19 billion, and its enterprise value is $1.08 billion.
Healthcare stocks are not weighted as heavily for Klarman and the Baupost Group as are other types of stocks, but there are other biopharmaceutical companies in their portfolio, among them Kindred Biosciences (KIN, Financial), Theravance Biopharma (TBPH, Financial), Forward Pharma (FWP, Financial) and Paratek Pharmaceuticals (PRTK, Financial).
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