Ocugen (NASDAQ:OCGN) stock has trended steadily downward for the past six months, shedding almost 70% of its value. While things have looked bleak for some time, they took a turn for the worse yesterday. The controversial biotech company announced a new share offering, specifically that it will sell 30 million shares for a value of roughly $16.5 million.
This development has sent OCGN stock into free fall. As of this writing, it is down more than 34% for the day and shows no signs of a rebound. For investors, this means a future that looks even more questionable now than it previously did. As InvestorPlace’s William White reports:
“Investors in OCGN stock aren’t happy about today’s public offering news. That makes sense as it increases the total number of outstanding shares. As a side effect of this, current investors’ stakes in the company are diluted. Also, the pricing of the offering is below yesterday’s close, which also devalues the stock.”
Frankly, Ocugen investors have no reason to be happy with this development. But they really had no reason to be optimistic about the company’s growth prospects before. At its core, OCGN is an unstable meme stock. Any growth it has seen since the 2021 vaccine rush has been driven mainly by the superficial hype that has become all too common for r/WallStreetBets favorites. But experts have continuously highlighted problems with this company, citing concerns regarding its failure to get its Covid-19 vaccine approved. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that institutional investors’ sentiment has also been steadily declining.
Top 5 Investors Betting Big on OCGN Stock
Data from Whale Wisdom makes it clear that institutional investors have soured on OCGN stock. The number of funds holding it has dropped more than 11%, while the number of 13F shares has plunged by more than 30%, as has percentage ownership. New positions are down 6%, and the number of closed positions has fallen by more than 7% since Q1. Increased positions are also falling sharply, down 32%. In fact, the only metric in the green is the company’s put/call ratio, which has spiked almost 60% to 0.7. This indicates that bearish sentiment toward OCGN stock is rising significantly.
Even with such discouraging numbers, some investors are still maintaining long positions in the troubled stock. Let’s take a closer look at who they are.
- BlackRock (NYSE:BLK): 15,111,920 shares. The financial sector titan added 50,559 shares of OCGN stock during the previous quarter.
- Vanguard Group: 13,014,850 shares. The mutual fund leader recently increased its position in Ocugen by 1,155,707 shares.
- State Street Corp (NYSE:STT): 5,819,039 shares. This financial services institution offloaded 295,072 OCGN shares in Q1.
- Geode Capital Management. 4,661,333 shares. This wealth management firm recently increased its OCGN stock holdings by 517,806.
- JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM): 3,141,557. Like State Street, this investment bank reduced its OCGN position in Q1, selling 625,311 shares.
On the date of publication, Samuel O’Brient did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
