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

Geron Co. (NASDAQ:GERN) saw unusually large options trading activity on Wednesday. Investors purchased 11,465 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 578% compared to the average daily volume of 1,691 call options.

Institutional Trading of Geron

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. RTW Investments LP bought a new stake in shares of Geron during the 3rd quarter valued at $200,268,000. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in Geron by 3.4% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 33,538,822 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $118,727,000 after purchasing an additional 1,088,912 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Geron by 28.4% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 28,961,671 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $131,486,000 after purchasing an additional 6,413,204 shares in the last quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC lifted its stake in Geron by 20.0% in the 4th quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 27,082,461 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock worth $95,769,000 after purchasing an additional 4,516,615 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Holocene Advisors LP purchased a new stake in Geron in the 3rd quarter worth $82,498,000. 73.71% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

GERN has been the subject of several analyst reports. Scotiabank cut their price target on shares of Geron from $6.00 to $4.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. Needham & Company LLC cut their price target on shares of Geron from $7.00 to $5.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. Stifel Nicolaus cut their price target on shares of Geron from $8.00 to $4.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. B. Riley lowered shares of Geron from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and cut their price target for the company from $3.50 to $2.00 in a research report on Thursday. Finally, HC Wainwright downgraded shares of Geron from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating, eight have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $5.68.

Geron Trading Up 8.1 %

Shares of GERN stock opened at $1.74 on Friday. Geron has a 12-month low of $1.46 and a 12-month high of $5.34. The company has a current ratio of 2.89, a quick ratio of 2.74 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04. The firm’s 50 day moving average is $2.97 and its 200 day moving average is $3.80. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.05 billion, a P/E ratio of -5.44 and a beta of 0.53.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last issued 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 business 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%. Research analysts expect that Geron will post -0.25 earnings per share 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.