Chardan Capital Keeps Their Buy Rating on La Jolla Pharma

Chardan Capital analyst Gbola Amusa maintained a Buy rating on La Jolla Pharma (NASDAQ: LJPC) today and set a price target of $115. The company’s shares opened today at $30.15.

Amusa observed:

“We note that Protagonist Therapeutics (unrated) has also presented data on its hepcidin mimetic, PTG-300, a potential competitor of LJPC-401. Protagonist’s EHA abstract indicated that PTG-300 in healthy volunteers leads to longer suppression of iron levels when compared to LJPC-401. We note that LJPC-401 is naturally-occurring while PTG-300 is a mimetic to the natural peptide (see S-1), which could potentially lead to antibodies against the unnatural PTG-300. La Jolla reported analysis of samples from its clinical trials has not shown antibodies to LJPC-401. The data shown Please refer to important disclosure information and Regulation Analyst Certification found on pages 14 – 16 of this report.by Protagonist seem to also indicate a potential plateauing effect at the 20 mg dose, akin to what was seen in the La Jolla study.”

According to TipRanks.com, Amusa is a 5-star analyst with an average return of 25.8% and a 54.9% success rate. Amusa covers the Healthcare sector, focusing on stocks such as Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals Inc, Nightstar Therapeutics Limited, and Arbutus Biopharma Corporation.

La Jolla Pharma has an analyst consensus of Moderate Buy, with a price target consensus of $52.67.

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Based on La Jolla Pharma’s latest earnings release for the quarter ending March 31, the company reported a quarterly GAAP net loss of $50.53 million. In comparison, last year the company had a GAAP net loss of $23.24 million.

Based on the recent corporate insider activity of 10 insiders, corporate insider sentiment is positive on the stock. This means that over the past quarter there has been an increase of insiders buying their shares of LJPC in relation to earlier this year. Earlier this month, Laura Douglass, a Director at LJPC bought 500 shares for a total of $3,000.

TipRanks has tracked 36,000 company insiders and found that a few of them are better than others when it comes to timing their transactions. See which 3 stocks are most likely to make moves following their insider activities.

La Jolla Pharmaceutical Co. operates as a biopharmaceutical company, which engages in the discovery, development and commercialization of therapies intended to significantly improve outcomes in patients suffering from life-threatening diseases. Its products includes LJPC-501, LJPC-401, LJPC-30Sa and LJPC-30Sb.