Sarepta Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SRPT) Shares Gap Up Following Analyst Upgrade

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SRPT) gapped up prior to trading on Wednesday after Royal Bank Of Canada raised their price target on the stock from $14.00 to $16.00. The stock had previously closed at $23.12, but opened at $24.19. Royal Bank Of Canada currently has a sector perform rating on the stock. Sarepta Therapeutics shares last traded at $24.03, with a volume of 2,388,082 shares.

SRPT has been the subject of a number of other research reports. William Blair reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Sarepta Therapeutics in a report on Tuesday, July 29th. Bank of America boosted their price target on shares of Sarepta Therapeutics to $17.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 20th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised shares of Sarepta Therapeutics from an “underweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $24.00 price target on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, July 29th. UBS Group reaffirmed a “neutral” rating on shares of Sarepta Therapeutics in a research report on Monday, July 21st. Finally, Leerink Partnrs cut shares of Sarepta Therapeutics from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, July 18th. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Hold rating and seven have assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $39.04.

Institutional Trading of Sarepta Therapeutics

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Wellington Management Group LLP increased its stake in shares of Sarepta Therapeutics by 27.9% during the first quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 2,646,619 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock worth $168,907,000 after buying an additional 577,848 shares during the period. T. Rowe Price Investment Management Inc. increased its stake in shares of Sarepta Therapeutics by 2.1% during the first quarter. T. Rowe Price Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,997,991 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock worth $127,512,000 after buying an additional 41,408 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Sarepta Therapeutics by 3.0% during the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,875,997 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock worth $32,085,000 after buying an additional 55,076 shares during the period. Federated Hermes Inc. increased its stake in shares of Sarepta Therapeutics by 347.8% during the second quarter. Federated Hermes Inc. now owns 1,308,199 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock worth $22,370,000 after buying an additional 1,016,069 shares during the period. Finally, EcoR1 Capital LLC increased its stake in Sarepta Therapeutics by 67.8% in the first quarter. EcoR1 Capital LLC now owns 1,292,386 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock valued at $82,480,000 after purchasing an additional 522,386 shares during the last quarter. 86.68% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Sarepta Therapeutics Price Performance

The company has a market capitalization of $2.28 billion, a PE ratio of -26.87 and a beta of 0.51. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.84, a current ratio of 2.89 and a quick ratio of 1.81. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $18.85 and its 200 day simple moving average is $31.74.

Sarepta Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SRPT) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 6th. The biotechnology company reported $2.02 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.89 by $1.13. The company had revenue of $611.09 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $530.66 million. Sarepta Therapeutics had a negative net margin of 2.34% and a negative return on equity of 1.03%. The firm’s revenue was up 68.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $0.07 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. will post 2.67 earnings per share for the current year.

Sarepta Therapeutics Company Profile

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc, a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery and development of RNA-targeted therapeutics, gene therapies, and other genetic therapeutic modalities for the treatment of rare diseases. It offers EXONDYS 51 injection to treat duchenne muscular dystrophy (duchenne) in patients with confirmed mutation of the dystrophin gene that is amenable to exon 51 skipping; VYONDYS 53 for the treatment of duchenne in patients with confirmed mutation of the dystrophin gene that is amenable to exon 53 skipping; AMONDYS 45 for the treatment of duchenne in patients with confirmed mutation of the dystrophin gene; and ELEVIDYS, an adeno-associated virus based gene therapy for the treatment of ambulatory pediatric patients aged 4 through 5 years with duchenne with a confirmed mutation in the duchenne gene.