Antares Pharma (AIS) has been generating quite a buzz lately. Bio-pharma stocks like Antares are open to a lot of speculation, both positive and negative. In my opinion, those who would know the most about the future direction of a company are the insiders and institutional investors.
I have made myself a good amount of money over the years by finding smaller cap growth companies and placing large bets on the ones where I have done the research carefully. The first thing I look for is how insiders and institutional investors feel about the company. First, let's take a look at the Antares insider roster:
Insider Transactions Reported - Last Two Years
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Data provided by EDGAR Online
We can see that there has been only one sale of stock in two years. The rest either bought or acquired stock via stock options and are holding. The insiders are bullish about their company. This is a very positive sign.
Let's take a look at AIS institutional ownership as of 1/4/2012:
| AIS Institutional Activity Summary | |||||
| Stock Trading Score: | 3.21 | Owners: | 120 | No Change: | 24 (20.00 %) |
| Buying: | 59 (49.16 %) | Brand New: | 18 (15.00 %) | Added More: | 41 (34.16 %) |
| Selling: | 37 (30.83 %) | Sold Some: | 23 (19.16 %) | Sold All: | 14 (11.66 %) |
| Current shares held by institutions: | 43,667,077. |
Roughly 40% of The 103 million shares outstanding are institutionally owned. For a stock selling under $5 a share, this is extremely bullish.
Note the largest amount of institutional activity falls into the buying category.
Let's take a look at recent institutional ownership:
| Filed | As-Of | Form | Fullname | Owner Return | Fund Class | Shares | Activity |
| 2011-12-29 | 2011-10-31 | N-CSR | Nationwide Mutual Funds - Nationwide Small Cap Index Fund | 1.36% | Small-Cap Core | 43240 | Added More |
| 2011-12-23 | 2011-10-31 | N-CSR | Tiaa Cref Institutional Mutual Funds - Equity Index Fund | -1.27% | Specialty & Misc | 58377 | New Holding |
| 2011-12-09 | 2011-09-30 | N-CSRS | Rydex Series Funds - Banking Fund | 5.98% | Financial Services | 835 | New Holding |
| 2011-11-30 | 2011-09-30 | N-Q | Vanguard Index Funds - Vanguard Extended Market Index Fund | 15.84% | Mid-Cap Core | 526974 | Added More |
| 2011-11-29 | 2011-09-30 | N-Q | John Hancock Trust - Small Cap Index Trust | 16.62% | Small-Cap Core | 57949 | Added More |
| 2011-11-29 | 2011-09-30 | N-Q | John Hancock Trust - Total Stock Market Index Trust | 8.09% | Specialty & Misc | 2166 | New Holding |
The above table only represents the last 40 days. Take note that end of the year selling on AIS was zero. The amount of shares bought during this time frame is small, but when Institutions normally are selling, we only find buying.
The three largest institutional owners are:
- Orbimed Advisors Llc 9,094,300 shares
- Blackrock Institutional Trust Company 2,695,712 shares
- Deerfield Management Co 2,456,940 shares
Orbimed Advisors LLC is known for being one of the smartest biotech institutional investment group around. I encourage everyone to do the DD on this known opinion. If they are bullish on AIS, then so am I.
I expect Oppenheimer to invest in AIS shortly. The reason I expect this is because Oppenheimer has asked a lot of questions in the last two AIS earnings conference calls. You can listen to these conferences here.
Obviously there are many more things to look at in a company before making an investment besides the insider and institutional shares owned. I will have more articles to come on Antares that will detail why I believe Antares in the long-term will bring huge gains.
In the meantime, I encourage readers to check out the following three articles here on Seeking Alpha that cover Antares:
Article 1 is here
Article 2 is here
Article 3 is here
Stay tuned for more detailed analysis of Antares Pharma and other articles from me here on Seeking Alpha.
Disclosure: I am long AIS.
