market folly

Jeff Ubben's activist investment firm ValueAct Capital just filed a 13D with the SEC regarding shares of Bioverativ (BIVV).  Per the filing, ValueAct now owns 7.1% of the company with 7.7 million shares.

This is a newly disclosed stake for the firm and the filing was made due to recent activity.  BIVV just went public in January as a spin-off from Biogen (BIIB). ValueAct did not own any BIIB shares as of the end of 2016 per their latest 13F filing with the SEC.

The 13D filing notes Ubben's firm made equity forward purchases and were buying between mid-January and early February with the bulk of their purchases coming with a forward price of around $44.41.

The filing contains the standard boilerplate that they bought shares because they thought the security was undervalued.  They've had and anticipate having further discussions with directors of the company.

For more on this firm, we just highlighted other recent ValueAct portfolio transactions.

Per Google Finance, Bioverativ is "focused on the discovery, research, development and commercialization of therapies for the treatment of hemophilia and other blood disorders. It markets approximately two products, including ELOCTATE [Antihemophilic Factor (Recombinant), Fc Fusion Protein], and ALPROLIX [Coagulation Factor IX (Recombinant), Fc Fusion Protein], extended half-life clotting-factor therapies for the treatment of hemophilia A and hemophilia B, respectively. ELOCTATE and ALPROLIX use a process known as Fc fusion to link recombinant factor VIII and factor IX, respectively, to a protein fragment in the body known as Fc. The fusion of the factor with the Fc protein fragment uses a naturally occurring pathway and is designed to extend the half-life of the factor thereby making the product last longer in a person's blood than various factor therapies. Its pipeline includes BIVV 001(rFVIIIFc-VWF-XTEN) and BIVV 002 (rFIXFc-XTEN)."