Geron Target of Unusually Large Options Trading (NASDAQ:GERN)

Geron Co. (NASDAQ:GERN) saw some unusual options trading on Wednesday. Stock traders acquired 11,465 call options on the stock. This is an increase of approximately 578% compared to the typical daily volume of 1,691 call options.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

GERN has been the topic of several recent research reports. Scotiabank cut their price objective on Geron from $6.00 to $4.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday. Barclays reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $4.00 target price (down from $9.00) on shares of Geron in a research report on Thursday. Needham & Company LLC lowered their target price on Geron from $7.00 to $5.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. HC Wainwright lowered Geron from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus lowered their target price on Geron from $8.00 to $4.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating, eight have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $5.68.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. RTW Investments LP bought a new position in shares of Geron in the third quarter worth $200,268,000. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in Geron by 3.4% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 33,538,822 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $118,727,000 after acquiring an additional 1,088,912 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its position in Geron by 28.4% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 28,961,671 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $131,486,000 after acquiring an additional 6,413,204 shares in the last quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC grew its position in Geron by 20.0% in the fourth quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 27,082,461 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $95,769,000 after acquiring an additional 4,516,615 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Holocene Advisors LP purchased a new position in Geron in the third quarter worth $82,498,000. Institutional investors own 73.71% of the company’s stock.

Geron Trading Up 8.1 %

Geron stock opened at $1.74 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $1.05 billion, a P/E ratio of -5.44 and a beta of 0.53. Geron has a fifty-two week low of $1.46 and a fifty-two week high of $5.34. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $2.97 and its 200-day moving average price is $3.80. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a quick ratio of 2.74 and a current ratio of 2.89.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, February 26th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.04) earnings per share for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of ($0.04). The firm had revenue of $47.54 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $45.29 million. Geron had a negative net margin of 682.48% and a negative return on equity of 67.53%. Equities research analysts forecast that Geron will post -0.25 earnings per share for the current fiscal 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.