Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) Receives $4.19 Consensus Price Target from Analysts

Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) has been given an average recommendation of “Moderate Buy” by the nine research firms that are currently covering the stock, MarketBeat reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating, four have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating on the company. The average 1-year price objective among brokerages that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $4.1875.

GERN has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. The Goldman Sachs Group initiated coverage on Geron in a report on Thursday, July 10th. They set a “sell” rating and a $1.00 price target for the company. Scotiabank cut Geron from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and lowered their price target for the stock from $4.00 to $1.50 in a report on Thursday, May 8th.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Geron

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. RA Capital Management L.P. boosted its holdings in Geron by 101.2% during the 1st quarter. RA Capital Management L.P. now owns 60,379,366 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $96,003,000 after acquiring an additional 30,369,830 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its holdings in Geron by 1.8% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 34,146,851 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $54,293,000 after acquiring an additional 608,029 shares during the period. Janus Henderson Group PLC boosted its holdings in Geron by 20.0% during the 4th quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 27,082,461 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $95,769,000 after acquiring an additional 4,516,615 shares during the period. Vestal Point Capital LP boosted its holdings in Geron by 100.0% during the 1st quarter. Vestal Point Capital LP now owns 22,005,340 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $34,988,000 after acquiring an additional 11,005,340 shares during the period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Geron by 4.3% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 14,152,038 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $19,956,000 after acquiring an additional 584,444 shares during the period. 73.71% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Geron Stock Up 5.9%

Shares of GERN opened at $1.43 on Friday. Geron has a 52-week low of $1.09 and a 52-week high of $4.83. The company has a market capitalization of $912.37 million, a PE ratio of -11.00 and a beta of 0.73. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $1.38 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $1.64. The company has a quick ratio of 6.79, a current ratio of 7.87 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.46.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 6th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.02) earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.03) by $0.01. The business had revenue of $49.04 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $47.30 million. Geron had a negative return on equity of 31.37% and a negative net margin of 53.52%. The company’s revenue was up 5455.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted ($0.10) EPS. As a group, equities analysts forecast 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.