Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) Given Consensus Recommendation of “Moderate Buy” by Brokerages

Shares of Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) have received an average rating of “Moderate Buy” from the nine analysts that are covering the stock, MarketBeat reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating on the company. The average 12-month price objective among brokers that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $4.1875.

A number of equities analysts have recently commented on the stock. Scotiabank lowered shares of Geron from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and dropped their price target for the company from $4.00 to $1.50 in a research report on Thursday, May 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group assumed coverage on shares of Geron in a research report on Thursday, July 10th. They set a “sell” rating and a $1.00 target price on the stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Geron

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. RA Capital Management L.P. boosted its stake in Geron by 101.2% during the first quarter. RA Capital Management L.P. now owns 60,379,366 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $96,003,000 after buying an additional 30,369,830 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in Geron by 1.8% during the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 34,146,851 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $54,293,000 after buying an additional 608,029 shares in the last quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC boosted its stake in Geron by 20.0% during the fourth quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 27,082,461 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $95,769,000 after buying an additional 4,516,615 shares in the last quarter. Vestal Point Capital LP boosted its stake in Geron by 100.0% during the first quarter. Vestal Point Capital LP now owns 22,005,340 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $34,988,000 after buying an additional 11,005,340 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in Geron by 4.3% during the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 14,152,038 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $19,956,000 after buying an additional 584,444 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 73.71% of the company’s stock.

Geron Trading Down 1.5%

NASDAQ:GERN opened at $1.28 on Friday. Geron has a 12 month low of $1.09 and a 12 month high of $4.84. The firm has a market cap of $816.67 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -9.85 and a beta of 0.73. The company has a quick ratio of 6.97, a current ratio of 7.87 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.44. The company’s 50 day moving average is $1.39 and its 200-day moving average is $1.67.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 6th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.02) EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.03) by $0.01. Geron had a negative net margin of 53.52% and a negative return on equity of 30.79%. The company had revenue of $49.04 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $47.30 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted ($0.10) earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 5455.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts anticipate that Geron will post -0.25 EPS for the current year.

Geron Company Profile

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.