Genetic medicine giant Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NTLA) blasted up 50.2% yesterday, after seeing similar gains in premarket trading yesterday, following a winner of a test. In trading yesterday, the company was doing so well that similar firms in the market saw gains, and Intellia's partner, Regeneron (NASDAQ:REGN) notched up a little higher as well. Intellia's upward momentum continues into this morning's trading session as well. With a range of analysts chiming in on positive outlooks—some analysts have doubled or nearly doubled previously-set price targets—it's looking very bright for Intellia.
Intellia is Fighting Transthyretin Amyloidoisis With CRISPR Gene Editing
The move that started Intellia's rapid ascent came yesterday, when it revealed news that it, along with Regeneron, had successfully completed Phase 1 studies of a new treatment geared toward fighting transthyretin amyloidosis. Transthyretin amyloidosis is, essentially, a build-up of unusual proteins in tissue that can bring with it several debilitating conditions, including heart trouble.
Treating such a disease, therefore, has ample benefit to society and to those who suffer from it. Enter Intellia, which used a genetic engineering tool known as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, more commonly known as CRISPR, to address the disease. The Intellia / Regeneron project has borne fruit so far, with Phase 1 clinical trials offering positive results.
The early reports note that the developed treatment, called NTLA-2001, was sufficient to reduce transthyretin levels by as much as 87% in those who took higher-level doses. NTLA-2001 is a deployment system for lipid nanoparticles, sent to a patient's liver, where a two-part genome editing system is put into place. With the system in place, a “guide RNA” is first produced specific to the gene that causes transthyretin amyloidosis, then a “messenger RNA”—also known as mRNA, similar to that used by Covid-19 vaccines—encodes a specific protein and begins modifying genes in the region accordingly. The current standard of care for this disease calls for a reduction of 80%, which is a substantial gain that represented what Intellia's chief medical officer, David Lebwohl, M.D., called “beyond what we expected.”
The Phase 1 data results were sufficiently strong to drive not only new interest around Intellia, but also around Regeneron, and even around other firms in the sector, providing an industry-wide halo effect. Some reports even go so far as to call Intellia's results “gene editing history.” This represents not only a new standard-bearer for therapy on this disease but also the first time that using gene-editing techniques has been proven to work on human beings. It's still a very early-stage process—reports note the initial data only covers about a month from the testing and only six patients have received the treatment so far—but if the data holds long-term over broader numbers, the implications are staggering.
What Are Financial Analysts Saying About Intellia Therapeutics Stock?
While Intellia Therapeutics has made gene editing history, Intellia Therapeutics stock represents a very attractive buy according to financial analysts. Our latest research on that front notes that not only does Intellia represent a “buy” by a wide margin, but it has held that ranking for nearly a year.
A year ago, the company had three “buy” ratings and four “hold”, leaving it a consensus “hold”. That began to tick upward starting in July 2020, when it officially switched over to a consensus “buy”. The upward momentum continued from there; six months ago, the company had eight “buy” ratings and four “hold” ratings. Today, it has 14 “buy” ratings and three “hold”, demonstrating that the ratio of “buy” to “hold” is improving substantially over time. It went from a “hold” to a “buy”, then a two-to-one “buy”, and now, it's approaching a five-to-one “buy”.
Intellia Therapeutics' stock price targets are in a fairly broad range, though stale results are contributing to that. Right now, the current average price target is $117.73, with a high of $171 and a low of $52. That low goes back to last December when Wells Fargo declared it, so it doesn't factor in the recent developments. With Intellia Therapeutics stock seen trading over $137 so far today, there may be some downside risk involved against the average, but given the recent developments, seeing the stock price go toward the higher targets is fairly likely.
Those recent developments have been universally positive and occasionally massive; 13 analysts have upgraded their price targets in the last week. One of the biggest such moves came from SVB Leerink, whose analyst—Mani Foroohar, M.D.—nearly doubled his price target on the company, taking it from $81 and sending it up to $159 per share. Major moves, if not quite so pronounced, have marked Intellia's trading this week; Raymond James upped its price target from $106 to $168 per share, while Truist and Truist Securities outright doubled their price targets from $80 to $160. Not every advance was so pronounced, but was there nonetheless; Wedbush upped its target from $73 to $87, and JMP Securities increased its target from $80 to $88.
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