The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:BCRX). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Healthcare company by 2.08% to 14.9 million shares with purchase of 0.3 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 7.28% valued currently at $87.61 million. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.7 million to 14.27 million shares. And Braidwell LP has lifted its position by 92.09% or 2.57 million shares – to 5.36 million shares.
With over 11.96 million Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BCRX) shares trading Monday and a closing price of $7.65 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $91.52 million. The shares have shown a positive half year performance of 3.80% and its price on 01/08/24 gained nearly 25.62%. Currently, there are 204.81M common shares owned by the public and among those 198.47M shares have been available to trade.
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An analysis of what Wall Street brokers have to say about the expected price targets for this stock gives us this picture: 12 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for BCRX have a consensus price objective of $13.82. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $30.00 and a low of $6.00. The average price target is 44.65% above its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -27.5% over that period. But an upside of 74.5% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $11.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 27 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 22 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 322,607 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 5 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 148,866 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. are SPDR S&P Biotech ETF, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, and iShares Russell 2000 ETF. SPDR S&P Biotech ETF owns 7.1 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $41.75 million. The company bought an additional 33090.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.47% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF bought 15580.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 5.94 million shares valued at over $34.95 million and representing 2.90% of the shares outstanding. iShares Russell 2000 ETF bought 2262.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 4.6 million shares at a value of $27.04 million. iShares Russell 2000 ETF now owns shares totaling to 2.25% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX) opened at $6.30, up $0.21 from a prior closing price of $6.09. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 27.71% and 21.04% over the past three months. BCRX shares are trading 27.71% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -34.73% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $4.82 and touched a high of $12.07 over the same period. BCRX has an average intraday trading volume of 3.94 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 27.45%, 33.88%, and 8.76% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX) shares accounts for 85.50% of the company’s 204.81M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 32.45%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 53.09% and 11.80% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $1.57B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.91. The earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at -$1.25. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 9.82% over the week and 7.11% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BCRX) will achieve an EPS of -$0.24 for the current quarter, -$0.23 for the next quarter and -$0.67 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$0.38 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of -$0.14. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was -$0.38 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 21.00%, and 32.68% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 44.80% over the next five years, compared to -11.25% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 12 brokerage firm advisors rate Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BCRX) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.33. Specifically, 10 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 2 of the 12 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the BCRX, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. JP Morgan stated their Overweight rating for the stock in a research note on November 20, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $10.
