Nuvation Bio Inc. (NUVB): Among Billionaire David Abrams' Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential

We recently published a list of Billionaire David Abrams’ 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Nuvation Bio Inc. (NYSE:NUVB) stands against other stock picks with huge upside potential.

David Abrams founded Abrams Capital Management in 1999. Before forming the Boston-based investment firm, Abrams worked at Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group for 10 years. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA degree in History, where he also served on the Board of Advisors of the College of Arts and Sciences. Abrams didn’t have a finance background when he got his first job in New York in the early 1980s. He learned all about investing under Seth Klarman before setting out independently after a decade. He is a value investor, and in the ~12 years of his fund, he has achieved an annualized return of around 20%. His firm is like a one-man shop, which employs a small staff. Abrams Capital has 9 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $10.05 billion, as reported in the firm’s Form ADV dated 13 January 2025. The last reported 13F filing for Q4 2024 included $6.22 billion in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 98.7%.

Abrams is known for maintaining a low public profile, but in a conversation on Columbia Business School’s ‘Value Investing with Legends’ Podcast series, he discussed the surface of his foundational principles when it comes to his investment philosophy. He starts by looking at the risks first and foremost, without any consideration of prospective gains. This is a reminder that the future remains unpredictable, which Abrams puts in the following words:

“When you look back, there’s one path that happened, but that doesn’t mean that going forward there’s only one path. In the future, there’s multiple paths.”

Abrams’ portfolio reflects a balanced approach with exposure to growth sectors like Industrials and Consumer Cyclical, while also maintaining moderate allocations in established industries such as Communication Services. He also believes that declining industries can present stability because they attract limited new entrants. This also implies that high-growth sectors are, on the contrary, characterized by intense competition, which necessitates a more detailed analysis of potential competitive threats. Here’s what Abrams had to say about this:

“If you have a shrinking industry and it’s dying, it’s like, people are not dying to get into that.”

Abrams serves as a director of several private companies. He is currently on the board of MITMCO, which manages the MIT endowment. Previously, he was a trustee of Berklee College of Music for 15 years, where he chaired the investment committee. He was also the trustee of Milton Academy.

Our Methodology

To compile the list of billionaire David Abrams’ 10 stock picks with huge upside potential, we sifted through Q4 2024 13F filings of Abrams Capital Management from Insider Monkey. From these filings, we checked each stock’s upside potential from CNN and ranked the stocks in ascending order of this upside potential. We have also added Abrams Capital Management’s stake in each stock as well as the broader hedge fund sentiment for it.

Note: All data was sourced on May 8.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Nuvation Bio Inc. (NYSE:NUVB)

Abrams Capital Management’s Stake: $10.14 million

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 34

Average Upside Potential as of May 8: 194.12%

Nuvation Bio Inc. (NYSE:NUVB) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that focuses on unmet needs in oncology by developing differentiated and novel therapeutic candidates. Its lead product candidate is taletrectinib, which is a next-generation ROS1 inhibitor for advanced ROS1+ non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The FDA granted Priority Review to taletrectinib’s NDA with a PDUFA goal date of 23 June 2025, which indicates a potential US launch in mid-2025. Taletrectinib is already approved in China and is being commercialized by Innovent Biologics. A Marketing Authorization Application has been submitted in Japan by Nippon Kayaku as well. Nuvation also launched a US Expanded Access Program in February 2025 for eligible patients.

The upcoming FDA decision on taletrectinib will unlock funding and establish taletrectinib as Nuvation’s first commercial product in the US. On March 12, analyst Soumit Roy of JonesTrading initiated coverage of the stock with a Buy rating and a price target of $10. Roy mentioned that Nuvation Bio Inc. (NYSE:NUVB) is poised to transition to a commercial-stage company by mid-2025. As of December 31, 2024, the company held $502.7 million in cash and marketable securities.

Overall, NUVB ranks 1st on our list of billionaire David Abrams’ stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of NUVB as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NUVB but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.