We recently compiled a list of the ARK Invest Stock Portfolio: Top 10 Stock Picks for 2024. In this article, we are going to take a look at where CRISPR Therapeutics AG (NASDAQ:CRSP) stands against ARK Invest’s top stock picks for 2024.
ARK Investment Management LLC, more commonly known as ARK Invest, is an American investment management firm headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, that oversees several actively managed ETFs. It was registered in 2014 by Catherine Wood, who is known for making big bets on disruptive technology like self-driving carse and genomics. The investment fund has around $6.7 billion in assets under management.
READ ALSO: Cathie Wood’s 11 Favorite AI Stocks and Jim Cramer November Portfolio: Top 10 Stocks.
Wood’s flagship fund has faced pressures for the third straight year, with outflows at nearly $1.8 billion during the first six months of 2024, which was close to triple the outflows seen in 2023. Its closing price of $57.85 on November 11 was down 60% from the highs of early 2021. In a letter posted to investors in July, she acknowledged that the fund’s performance was challenged by certain stock picks and the overall macroeconomic environment, but added that ‘our conviction in and commitment to investing in disruptive innovation have not wavered’.
The ARK Invest CEO argued that the fund’s holdings were set to benefit once the Fed rate cuts begin and that she anticipates another period of strong returns, reminiscent of the gains witnessed during the initial days of the pandemic. In August this year, in the hope of buying the dip, Wood piled into several tech stocks whose shares had tumbled in the months prior. Since the announcement of interest rate cuts in September, ARK’s flagship ETF has grown 25%, with a major upward spike in the week running up to and following the presidential elections, which Donald Trump won on November 5.
In a post-election message released to investors, Wood likened the country’s current economic situation to the Reagan era in the early 1980s, when the interest rate and tax cuts resulted in robust economic growth, eventually helping the United States grow out of deficit and into a surplus in the Clinton era.
Cathie Wood predicts a bright future and has stated that Trump’s policies will ‘turbocharge’ the American economy more powerfully than the Reagan Revolution did. She expects the newly elected president to slash regulations and cut tax rates, as he did during his first term.
Trump during his election campaign vowed to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15%, after having already cut the rate from 35% to 21% in his presidency between 2017 and 2021. Having said that, Wood believes that businesses will put investments on hold until the promised cuts are delivered, which means the positive anticipated impact on the economy will be delayed.
Methodology
We scanned the ARK Investment Management portfolio, as of September 30, 2024, and picked the top 10 stocks according to their stake value. The figures were sourced from the Insider Monkey Database.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? 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).
A laboratory cultivating cells for the development of gene and cell therapies.
CRISPR Therapeutics AG (NASDAQ:CRSP)
Stake Value as of Q3 2024: $352,285,403
CRISPR Therapeutics AG is a gene editing company focused on developing CRISPR/Cas9-based therapeutics to treat genetically-defined diseases and engineer advanced cellular therapies. It is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland.
On October 17, ARK Invest bought 91,665 shares of the company, valued at close to $4.5 million, indicating Cathie Wood’s strong conviction in the potential of CRISPR therapeutics. In December 2023, the FDA approved CASGEVY, a cell-based gene therapy, for the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD). The therapy has also been approved to treat patients of SCD and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia (TDT) aged 12 and above in Switzerland and Canada.
On November 5, CRISPR Therapeutics AG (NASDAQ:CRSP) provided business updates and announced financial results for the third quarter of 2024. There are now 45 authorized treatment centers for CASGEVY worldwide, with around 40 patients having cells collected. This is a notable increase from previous quarters and has received considerable interest from analysts and investors.
The company’s cash position is improving and was measured at approximately $1.94 billion as of September 30, up from $1.7 billion at the end of 2023. The increase was driven by proceeds from the $280 million in February 2024 registered direct offering and $200 million received from Vertex Pharmaceuticals in payments connected with the approval of CASGEVY.
Wall Street analysts have a consensus BUY rating on CRISPR Therapeutics AG (NASDAQ:CRSP), with a median share price upside potential of 63%. Hedge fund sentiment around the stock is also encouraging. Amongst hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey, 29 held a stake in the company, as of Q2 2024, up from 27 at the end of the first quarter. CRSP is one of the best stock picks from the ARK Invest portfolio.
Overall CRSP ranks 9th among the ARK Invest’s top Stock Picks for 2024. While we acknowledge the potential of CRSP as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CRSP but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.