Geron Co. (NASDAQ:GERN) Given Consensus Recommendation of “Buy” by Brokerages

Shares of Geron Co. (NASDAQ:GERN) have been given an average rating of “Buy” by the eleven research firms that are covering the stock, MarketBeat Ratings reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a hold recommendation, nine have given a buy recommendation and one has assigned a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 12 month price objective among analysts that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $7.05.

GERN has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Geron to a “sell” rating in a report on Monday, August 5th. Leerink Partnrs upgraded shares of Geron to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, September 9th. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $6.00 target price on shares of Geron in a report on Friday, August 9th. HC Wainwright began coverage on Geron in a report on Tuesday, November 5th. They set a “buy” rating and a $8.00 price target for the company. Finally, Wedbush reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $8.00 price target on shares of Geron in a research report on Thursday, August 8th.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Geron

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in GERN. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in Geron by 4.6% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 29,869,287 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $98,569,000 after purchasing an additional 1,304,713 shares during the period. CANADA LIFE ASSURANCE Co boosted its position in shares of Geron by 12.3% in the first quarter. CANADA LIFE ASSURANCE Co now owns 64,438 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $212,000 after acquiring an additional 7,034 shares during the period. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD boosted its position in shares of Geron by 999.7% in the first quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 2,064,963 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $6,815,000 after acquiring an additional 1,877,184 shares during the period. Teachers Retirement System of The State of Kentucky grew its stake in shares of Geron by 23.8% in the first quarter. Teachers Retirement System of The State of Kentucky now owns 305,347 shares of the biopharmaceutical company’s stock valued at $1,008,000 after acquiring an additional 58,787 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Csenge Advisory Group bought a new position in Geron during the second quarter worth about $66,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 73.71% of the company’s stock.

Geron Trading Down 1.2 %

Geron stock opened at $4.12 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a current ratio of 2.89 and a quick ratio of 2.74. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $4.16 and a 200-day moving average of $4.32. The company has a market cap of $2.49 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -12.88 and a beta of 0.52. Geron has a one year low of $1.64 and a one year high of $5.34.

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 7th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.04) EPS 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 analysts’ expectations of $18.97 million. Geron had a negative return on equity of 67.53% and a negative net margin of 682.48%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 17138.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted ($0.08) earnings per share. On average, equities analysts expect that Geron will post -0.25 earnings per share for the current fiscal 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.