ARK Invest stock commentary email
Stock Commentary: HIMS, CSTL, CDXS, MASS, SPCE, API, CLLS, EVGN, SKLZ, TWST, & BILL
It’s Friday, February 5, 2021
Hello James,
We share weekly commentaries with investors on stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15% in a day during the course of the week. We hope you find this commentary useful.
In addition, whenever the market appears to be in a state of heightened volatility, we will post a video in which I provide a short review of the dynamics at play. You can find this week’s “In the Know with Cathie Wood” here.
Hims & Hers Health (HIMS)
16%
His & Hers Health (HIMS), a newly public telemedicine company focused on removing the stigma associated with historically taboo health subjects, traded up 16% on Monday. The price action may have been caused by institutional investors building positions at the same time that Robinhood removed HIMS from its restricted list.
Castle Biosciences (CSTL)
15%
Castle Biosciences (CSTL) traded up roughly 15% on Tuesday possibly in response to target price increases at both SVB Leerink and Canaccord Genuity. In addition, speculators may have purchased CSTL in anticipation of the Annual South Beach Symposium, during which Castle presented positive data on the performance of its DecisionDx-Melanoma test that improved risk-stratification for patients with smaller (T1) melanomas.
Codexis (CDXS)
15%
Codexis (CDXS), a protein engineering company, closed up 15% on Tuesday perhaps because of increased investor confidence in its protein engineering platform, CodeEvolver. Recently, Google’s Deep Mind announced AlphaFold, a neural network-based algorithm that can predict protein folding, causing elevated interest in the space.
908 Devices (MASS)
16%
908 Devices (MASS), an analytical tools company focused on decentralizing and lowering the cost of mass spectrometry, traded up nearly 16% on Tuesday, we believe in response to investors’ increased confidence in the more nascent proteomics space. Stifel, Cowen, and SVB Leerink all initiated on MASS with either ‘buy’ or ‘outperform’ ratings.
Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE)
21%
Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE) was up 30% and 21% on Monday and Wednesday, respectively, after announcing the date of its new test flight window. Opening on February 13, the window is likely to provide several opportunities during the month to fly. The flight will test the answers to challenges that surfaced during the last test flight in December.
Agora Inc (API)
21%
Agora Inc (API) rose 30% and 21% on Monday and Wednesday, respectively, seemingly in response to the rapid growth of Clubhouse, one of its increasingly popular customers. Agora is an API-based real-time-communications company in China enabling live video and voice engagements at large scale.
Cellectis (CLLS)
20%
Cellectis (CLLS), a bio-pharmaceutical company that harnesses the power of TALENS, a gene-editing technique to create immunotherapies, traded down 20% on Wednesday on little news that we could discern.
Evogene (EVGN)
16%
Evogene (EVGN), a computational biology company, closed up 16% on Thursday perhaps in response to news of the availability of call and put options on its stock.
Skillz (SKLZ)
25%
Skillz (SKLZ) rose 25% on Thursday after announcing a deal with the National Football League (NFL) to develop a mobile NFL-themed game. The two sports organizations will host a competition for developers around the world to create an NFL-themed mobile game, ultimately with the hope of introducing hundreds of millions of NFL fans to the Skillz esports platform.
Twist Bioscience (TWST)
17%
Twist Bioscience (TWST) fell approximately 17% on Friday after reporting fiscal first quarter results that outperformed analysts’ expectations on both the top and bottom lines but leaving 2021 revenue guidance unchanged. Moreover, its new manufacturing facility in Oregon could prevent gross margin expansion in 2021. Our confidence in Twist remains unchanged for multiple reasons. The company’s investments in capacity should contribute to margin expansion over the long-term, galvanized by secular growth in the synthetic biology and liquid biopsy markets. In addition, we believe Twist’s data-driven approach to target enrichment for next-generation sequencing (NGS) is best-in-class, especially for more esoteric biomarkers such as DNA methylation which are difficult to detect in liquid biopsies.
BILL (BILL)
25%
BILL.com (BILL) rallied 25% on Friday after reporting strong results. BILL saw 59% core revenue growth, driven by a 33% increase in subscriptions and a 98% jump in transactions. Meanwhile BILL.com continues to invest in R&D and channel partner products, expanding its total available market. BILL.com automates back-office finance operations for small and medium sized businesses through its accounts payable software and B2B payments network.