Where The Buying Ran Strongest: 46 Small Cap Stocks At 52-Week Highs
Health Care names dominate a list of small companies hitting new price peaks.
Repligen (RGEN), with a market value of about $9.9 billion, leads a list of 46 Small Cap stocks trading at their 52-week highs. The day’s list is overwhelmingly concentrated in a single area of the market, with 29 names coming from the Health Care sector. This raises a key question: is the strength uniform, or are the underlying businesses telling different stories? Below are the 10 largest of these names.
The 10 Largest, By Market Cap
The table below shows the 10 largest of the 46 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RGEN | $9.94 Bil | 6.1% | 6.4% | 28.7% | 42.1% |
| BIO | $9.82 Bil | 3.3% | 0.6% | 20.7% | 28.0% |
| IMVT | $9.15 Bil | 1.5% | 5.5% | 13.7% | 194.6% |
| PCVX | $8.83 Bil | 5.9% | 6.1% | 9.1% | 97.3% |
| TWST | $8.79 Bil | 22.6% | 13.7% | 48.5% | 408.2% |
| SYRE | $8.56 Bil | 1.0% | 4.6% | 6.1% | 543.0% |
| TXG | $7.98 Bil | 11.8% | 7.7% | 31.8% | 362.0% |
| SM | $7.19 Bil | 1.8% | 11.5% | 12.2% | 44.2% |
| CGON | $6.82 Bil | 5.8% | 4.8% | 12.5% | 208.8% |
| TVTX | $6.06 Bil | 3.2% | 6.1% | 16.6% | 251.4% |
Does every new high signal a healthy business?
A new high price does not always mean the same thing for the underlying business. Repligen (RGEN) trades at 239.5 times trailing earnings with revenue growth of 16.5% over the last twelve months and an operating margin of 8.3%. Contrast that with Twist Bioscience (TWST), where revenue grew 19.2% over the last twelve months but its operating margin is -32.0%.
A high price demands a close look at the business.
A 52-week-high list is a map of strength, and strong stocks often continue to perform. But a price is an opinion, not a verdict on a company’s quality. The disciplined approach is to treat the high as a starting point. The work is to check whether the business fundamentals can earn the market’s current valuation.
Before chasing any name on this list, ask what the company itself expects next. Our Guidance Momentum screen surfaces the stocks whose managements just raised their own outlooks, which is the momentum that tends to have staying power.
One more pattern worth noticing: 29 of the 46 names are Health Care stocks. When a whole group is making new highs together, a biotech ETF like XBI is one way to own the group’s strength without betting on which single name leads it from here.
New Highs Fade. Discipline Compounds
Some of the names on this list will keep setting highs for years, and some are at the top of their run right now. Sorting one from the other, name by name, every day, is the work most investors never keep up with.
That sorting is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does systematically: about 30 quality businesses screened for the fundamentals that sustain a run, held with rules instead of excitement. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000. Use the high list for ideas; use the portfolio for the compounding.