Needham & Company LLC Reaffirms Buy Rating for Geron (NASDAQ:GERN)

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reiterated by research analysts at Needham & Company LLC in a report issued on Thursday, Benzinga reports. They presently have a $5.00 price target on the biopharmaceutical company’s stock. Needham & Company LLC’s target price suggests a potential upside of 37.36% from the company’s current price.

Several other equities analysts also recently weighed in on the company. Wedbush reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $6.00 target price on shares of Geron in a research report on Wednesday. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price objective on Geron from $4.00 to $5.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 15th.

Geron Stock Performance

NASDAQ GERN opened at $3.64 on Thursday. The company has a market cap of $1.99 billion, a P/E ratio of -11.03 and a beta of 0.62. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14, a quick ratio of 3.16 and a current ratio of 3.16. The business’s 50 day moving average price is $2.57 and its 200-day moving average price is $2.18. Geron has a fifty-two week low of $1.64 and a fifty-two week high of $4.05.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, February 28th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.09) earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.10) by $0.01. The firm had revenue of $0.02 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $0.06 million. Geron had a negative return on equity of 63.33% and a negative net margin of 77,691.14%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 77.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted ($0.10) EPS. Sell-side analysts predict that Geron will post -0.34 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Geron

Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in GERN. Pathstone Family Office LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Geron in the 3rd quarter worth $26,000. Cerity Partners LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Geron during the 4th quarter worth $26,000. Creative Planning purchased a new stake in shares of Geron during the 3rd quarter worth $26,000. CIBC Asset Management Inc purchased a new stake in shares of Geron during the 4th quarter worth $27,000. Finally, China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. lifted its stake in shares of Geron by 101.3% during the 3rd quarter. China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 13,426 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $28,000 after purchasing an additional 6,757 shares during the last quarter. 73.71% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

About Geron

Geron Corporation, a late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the development and commercialization of therapeutics for myeloid hematologic malignancies. It develops imetelstat, a telomerase inhibitor that is in Phase 3 clinical trials, which inhibits the uncontrolled proliferation of malignant stem and progenitor cells in myeloid hematologic malignancies for the treatment of low or intermediate-1 risk myelodysplastic syndromes and intermediate-2 or high-risk myelofibrosis.