Geron Co. (NASDAQ:GERN) Receives Consensus Rating of “Buy” from Analysts

Shares of Geron Co. (NASDAQ:GERN) have earned a consensus rating of “Buy” from the eleven brokerages that are covering the stock, Marketbeat reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a hold recommendation, eight have assigned a buy recommendation and two have issued a strong buy recommendation on the company. The average 12 month price objective among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $7.25.

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on GERN. Needham & Company LLC raised their price objective on shares of Geron from $6.00 to $7.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, January 13th. HC Wainwright restated a “buy” rating and issued a $9.00 price target on shares of Geron in a research report on Tuesday, December 10th. Barclays raised shares of Geron to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Scotiabank began coverage on Geron in a research report on Wednesday, October 16th. They set a “sector outperform” rating and a $6.00 target price on the stock.

Institutional Trading of Geron

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Darwin Global Management Ltd. bought a new position in shares of Geron during the second quarter valued at $106,185,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC bought a new position in Geron during the 2nd quarter valued at about $3,315,000. RTW Investments LP acquired a new position in Geron in the third quarter valued at about $200,268,000. Algert Global LLC bought a new stake in Geron during the second quarter worth about $539,000. Finally, Farallon Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Geron by 124.6% during the second quarter. Farallon Capital Management LLC now owns 16,837,000 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $71,389,000 after buying an additional 9,342,000 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 73.71% of the company’s stock.

Geron Stock Down 1.0 %

GERN stock opened at $2.89 on Tuesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.75 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -9.03 and a beta of 0.55. The company has a 50-day moving average of $3.65 and a two-hundred day moving average of $4.16. Geron has a 52-week low of $1.64 and a 52-week high of $5.34. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a current ratio of 2.89 and a quick ratio of 2.74.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, November 7th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.04) earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.09) by $0.05. The firm had revenue of $28.27 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $18.97 million. Geron had a negative return on equity of 67.53% and a negative net margin of 682.48%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 17138.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned ($0.08) EPS. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Geron will post -0.25 EPS for the current year.

About Geron

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.