Armistice Capital closed 2024 managing $7.33 billion in 13F securities across 231 positions, according to its fourth-quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based hedge fund’s latest disclosures show a portfolio divided between its established healthcare concentration and a smaller but growing set of retail equity stakes, a combination that reflects how some event-driven managers are hedging sector-specific risk while keeping their largest bets anchored in pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Healthcare Still Dominates
The bulk of Armistice Capital’s disclosed positions remain in biotech and biopharma, a pattern consistent with prior quarters. PTC Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTCT) held the most notable weight. At the end of Q4 2024, the fund held 6,378,000 shares of the Warren, New Jersey-based company, valued at approximately $287.9 million, down from 7,234,898 shares in Q3. PTC focuses on rare genetic disorders, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy and phenylketonuria, with pipeline candidates spanning Huntington’s disease through its PTC518 program, which attracted a $2.9 billion collaboration with Novartis.
Other major institutional holders of PTC include Wellington Management, which owns 10.18% of the company, and RTW Investments at 7.70%. Vanguard Group and BlackRock hold index-driven positions consistent with broad sector exposure. Armistice’s stake of 5.43 million shares places it among the top five institutional holders — a concentrated bet in a company that submitted four separate FDA approval applications in 2024 and received approval for its Kebilidi gene therapy for AADC deficiency in November of that year.
Armistice Capital also added exposure to Immunovant (NASDAQ: IMVT) during the quarter, increasing its common stock position to 3,870,586 shares from 3,548,000 in Q3, while adding 1,350,000 call option contracts. Immunovant’s lead candidate, batoclimab, remains in Phase IIa trials targeting autoimmune conditions, including myasthenia gravis and thyroid eye disease. A similar mixed equity-and-options structure appears in the fund’s position in Cytokinetics (NASDAQ: CYTK), where Armistice held roughly 1.02 million shares alongside 2.7 million call option contracts as of its most recently disclosed filing, representing approximately 1.63% of its portfolio. Cytokinetics’ lead drug aficamten faces an FDA decision by December 26, 2025, for the treatment of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition affecting an estimated 1 in 500 people globally.
Not every position moved upward. Armistice reduced its stake in Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ: INCY) by roughly 19% during Q4, ending the quarter with 1.8 million shares valued at approximately $122 million. Incyte posted $1.2 billion in revenue for Q4 2024, a 16% year-over-year gain, and counts Morgan Stanley among its other major institutional holders.
Medical Devices Add a Different Dimension
Alongside its biopharma positions, Armistice Capital increased its holdings in Dentsply Sirona (NASDAQ: XRAY) by 32.22% during Q4, growing to 3,499,628 shares from 2,646,772 the prior quarter, valued at approximately $66.4 million. Dentsply, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, manufactures intraoral scanners, 3D printing systems, and imaging tools for the dental market. Vanguard Group holds the largest institutional position at approximately 10% of outstanding equity, with BlackRock close behind at around 9%.
The fund also expanded its Grifols S.A. (NASDAQ: GRFS) stake by 5.24% to 10,036,000 shares, valued at approximately $74.7 million at quarter’s end. Grifols, a Barcelona-based biopharmaceutical company, specializes in plasma-derived therapies for immune deficiencies and coagulation disorders. The company posted a net profit of EUR 157 million for the full year 2024. Institutional investors collectively own approximately 54.4% of Grifols’ stock, per Nasdaq data.
A Smaller Retail Footprint
What distinguishes Armistice Capital’s Q4 2024 disclosures from earlier quarters is the presence of retail equity stakes, holdings that sit well outside the healthcare core. The fund reported owning 104,690 shares of Ross Stores (NASDAQ: ROST), 485,000 shares of Foot Locker (NYSE: FL), and a newly initiated position of 87,677 shares in Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) as of December 31, 2024.
Ross Stores reported $5.9 billion in sales for Q4 fiscal 2024, with comparable store sales up 3%. Foot Locker’s Q4 results showed comparable sales growth of 2.6%, though total sales fell 5.8% year-over-year. Best Buy posted comparable sales growth of 0.5% for Q4 fiscal 2025, exceeding prior guidance. These are smaller positions relative to the fund’s healthcare bets, but their presence alongside concentrated pharma holdings signals some degree of cross-sector diversification within the overall book.
Point72 Asset Management and Stifel Financial Corp also held positions in Foot Locker as of recent filings. At Ross Stores, Vanguard Group held 10.34% of outstanding equity, BlackRock 8.84%, and JPMorgan Investment Management 5.95%. Roughly 87% of Ross Stores shares are held by institutions, according to available data.
The Broader Hedge Fund Context
Armistice Capital’s portfolio construction reflects a wider pattern among healthcare-focused hedge funds. A growing number of active managers are hiring physicians, scientists, and specialized analysts to evaluate drug trial data and regulatory timelines ahead of binary FDA decisions. The FDA approved 50 novel drugs in 2024, down from 55 in 2023, and the agency’s July release of more than 200 previously confidential complete response letters has given institutional investors additional data points for assessing approval risk.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary addressed the information gap directly in connection with that disclosure: “For far too long, drug developers have been playing a guessing game when navigating the FDA. Drug developers and capital markets alike want predictability.”
Meanwhile, broader biopharma fundraising rose to $26 billion in 2024 from $23.3 billion in 2023, though that capital was unevenly distributed. Large-cap pharmaceutical deal activity remained active, with Merck KGaA acquiring SpringWorks for $3.9 billion and Johnson & Johnson paying $14.6 billion for Intra-Cellular Therapies, transactions that reflect urgency around pipeline replenishment ahead of a $200 to $400 billion global patent cliff. Against that backdrop, hedge funds with deep sector expertise and the flexibility to combine equity and options exposure are positioned to move quickly as regulatory and commercial catalysts materialize.
