Cathie Wood Buys Into a Biotech With a Covid Connection

Star investor Cathie Wood, chief executive of Ark Investment Management, has recently built a stake in a biotechnology company that earlier this month received a dose of good news.

The stock is Adaptive Biotechnologies  (ADPT) – Get Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. Report. The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency-use authorization for a new test developed by the Seattle company to find prior Covid infections.

The new test differs from previous ones the FDA has authorized to discover Covid antibodies. The Adaptive test hunts for a T-cell response that would indicate whether someone was infected previously.

Wood most recently bought Adaptive shares on Thursday and has established a $100.3 million position in the Ark Genomic Revolution ETF  (ARKG) – Get ARK Genomic Revolution ETF Report. That makes Adaptive the fund’s 13^th biggest holding.

Scroll to Continue

It’s difficult to say whether Adaptive is a growth or value stock. After the company went public in 2019, the stock soared 40% as of Jan. 18, 2021, but has slumped 82% since then. 

To be sure, it has rebounded 23% in the past 11 days. It is now trading at less than half what it was at the start of the year and less than a third of its 52-week high, set late last April.

As for Wood, earlier this month she said on a podcast with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that society is about to go through unprecedented technological change. The last time such a significant transformation occurred was in the early 20th century, with the introduction of the telephone, electricity and the automobile.

Five major innovation platforms are evolving: artificial intelligence, robotics, energy storage, DNA sequencing and blockchain technology, Wood said. “All of them are on exponential growth trajectories and are converging with each other,” she told Hayes.

Over the next 10 years, the market cap associated with the five platforms that include 14 transformative technologies will grow at a 30% compounded annual rate of return, Wood said.