Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) Shares Gap Down Following Analyst Downgrade

Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN) gapped down before the market opened on Tuesday after Guggenheim lowered their price target on the stock from $17.00 to $15.00. The stock had previously closed at $7.43, but opened at $7.28. Guggenheim currently has a buy rating on the stock. Valneva shares last traded at $7.03, with a volume of 5,928 shares.

Separately, HC Wainwright reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $17.00 price target on shares of Valneva in a research note on Friday.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Valneva

A hedge fund recently bought a new stake in Valneva stock. ABC Arbitrage SA purchased a new stake in Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN) during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund purchased 19,244 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $84,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 11.39% of the company’s stock.

Valneva Trading Down 3.8 %

The business’s 50 day simple moving average is $6.40 and its 200 day simple moving average is $5.59. The stock has a market cap of $580.61 million, a P/E ratio of -54.96 and a beta of 1.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.70, a current ratio of 2.78 and a quick ratio of 2.25.

Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 20th. The company reported ($0.54) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.22) by ($0.32). The firm had revenue of $56.48 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $55.64 million. Valneva had a negative net margin of 4.35% and a negative return on equity of 3.93%. On average, analysts expect that Valneva SE will post 0.13 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About Valneva

Valneva SE, a specialty vaccine company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases with unmet needs. It offers IXIARO, an inactivated Vero cell culture-derived Japanese encephalitis vaccine indicated for active immunization against Japanese encephalitis; DUKORAL, an oral vaccine for the prevention of diarrhea caused by Vibrio cholera and/or heat-labile toxin producing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli bacterium; IXCHIQ, a single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine for the prevention of disease caused by chikungunya virus; and VLA2001, an inactivated whole-virus COVID-19 vaccine.