We recently published a list of the 10 Best Performing Healthcare Stocks So Far in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO) stands against other best performing healthcare stocks so far in 2025.
The Healthcare Sector and its Dynamics in the Stock Market
Despite the ongoing craze surrounding the GLP-1 obesity drugs, the healthcare sector was a lagger last year. On January 3, Jared Holz, Mizuho Securities America’s healthcare sector strategist, appeared on CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ to talk about the healthcare sector’s outlook in 2025. While he anticipates another year of underperformance for the sector, he also believes that healthcare has “been so bad, maybe it’s gonna be good” in 2025.
Holz further said that the healthcare sector presents a calamity since there aren’t a lot of easy spaces in the domain. Other industry verticals, such as technology and financials, are well set up. Healthcare, in contrast, appears to have several variables in place, and most of them are not positive. However, he believed that the MedTech sector provides a sort of safety net in such a tumultuous sector. We talked about the medical device sector and the future of the healthcare industry in the US in a recently published article on 10 Best Medical Device Stocks To Buy According to Hedge Funds. Here is an excerpt from the article:
“According to McKinsey, the healthcare industry is expected to continually undergo a shift in growth dynamics. Health services and technology (HST) revenue pools are anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8% between 2023 and 2028, supported by double-digit growth in software platforms and advanced data and analytics. The sales of innovative technologies such as generative AI to payers and providers are further supporting this growth.
AI and its Use in Healthcare: Is It All a Hoax?
Talking about the recent trends involving the increasing use of AI in the healthcare sector, Holz said that the scenario is possibly helping the software and technology companies more than healthcare ones. AI and its impact on drug development in clinical trials is another significant subject of discussion in the healthcare sector. However, Holz said that the industry is not really seeing the positive impact of the adoption of AI in the sector. Several clinical trials employing AI have failed in the recent past.
So, even though it seems that the science and technology behind the scenes is getting better, it hasn’t necessarily translated to better drug development and higher approval rates. Although he expects that the use of AI may lead to better results in the future, Holz believes that it is too early to make generalizations that the AI craze will lead to better results for biotech or pharma, at least in the near term.
Our Methodology
We used Finviz to screen healthcare stocks and looked at their year-to-date (YTD) performance, as of February 17, 2025, to select the best performing stocks. We also included the number of hedge fund holders for each stock as of Q3 2024. We sourced the hedge fund sentiment data from Insider Monkey’s database. The list is sorted in ascending order of year-to-date performance.
Why do we care about what hedge funds do? 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A scientist in a lab coat examining a sample under a microscope in a laboratory.
Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO) is a clinical-stage company that develops transformational treatments for patients with serious metabolic diseases that have high unmet medical needs, such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), which does not have any approved therapies. The company’s primary product is efruxifermin (EFX), which treats MASH and is undergoing phase 3 of clinical trials. Efruxifermin (EFX) is an analog of fibroblast growth factor 21, an endogenously expressed hormone that regulates carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins while offering protection against cellular stress.
The Phase 2b study of the drug was well-received by participants, with no deaths and only minor adverse effects reported, causing the stock to surge in January. EFX has the potential to become a first-in-class therapy for MASH-induced cirrhosis, which is causing investors to be bullish on the company.
Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKRO) also completed an upsized public offering in January, raising $402.5 million by selling 6.4 million shares at $48 each. 30 hedge funds hold stakes in the company as of Q3 2024. Its median price target of $50.62 implies an upside of 48.18% from current levels.
Overall, AKRO ranks 2nd on our list of the best performing healthcare stocks so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of AKRO, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AKRO but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
