By Pete Gallo
One of the most spectacular payoffs in public stocks so far this year has been Chilton Investment Co.’s incorrigible portfolio bet on a smaller-cap pharmaceutical specialist called Vivus, whose share-price trajectory has surged from burgeoning to ballistic, thanks to recent regulatory approvals for its experimental weight-loss drug, Qnexa.
Chilton is the largest shareholder in the drugmaker, boasting a gargantuan 9.7 percent stake. That said, Vivus isn’t exactly new to the Chilton portfolio. Regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that the hedge fund has steadily upped its share holdings in the company from 5.9 million at the start of 2011 to 8.6 million by the start of 2012. Notably, records show that Chilton added a portion of that stake back in 2010 at recession-battered prices: The stock dipped to as low as $4.98 in July of that year, off a previous high of $12.50....