Oppenheimer Keeps Their Buy Rating on Mirati Therapeutics

Oppenheimer analyst Leah R. Cann maintained a Buy rating on Mirati Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRTX) yesterday and set a price target of $35. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $32.30, close to its 52-week high of $37.62.

Cann noted:

“We are adjusting our outlook for loss per share for 2018-2019 to account for the increased ramp in R&D and increased SG&A. Loss per share is being increased by 14.1% for 2018 and 31.1% for 2019. Our operating outlook for 2020-2023 remains basically unchanged. In a recent clinical update, data were encouraging and supportive of Mirati’s lead compound, sitravatinib, as a combination therapy with a checkpoint inhibitor. The data from the sitravatinib Phase II combination with Opdivo in NSCLC in this analysis were very similar to the first analysis of these data, only with more than twice as many patients. We view this as a very positive sign for sitravatinib’s success in this setting.”

According to TipRanks.com, Cann is a 4-star analyst with an average return of 9.0% and a 46.9% success rate. Cann covers the Healthcare sector, focusing on stocks such as Miragen Therapeutics Inc, CytomX Therapeutics Inc, and Crispr Therapeutics AG.

Currently, the analyst consensus on Mirati Therapeutics is Strong Buy and the average price target is $39.20, representing a 21.4% upside.

In a report issued on April 25, H.C. Wainwright also reiterated a Buy rating on the stock with a $40 price target.

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Based on Mirati Therapeutics’ latest earnings release for the quarter ending December 31, the company reported a quarterly GAAP net loss of $17.9 million. In comparison, last year the company had a GAAP net loss of $17.85 million.

Based on the recent corporate insider activity of 22 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 MRTX in relation to earlier this year. Last month, Isan Chen, the EVP, Chief Medical Officer of MRTX bought 13,038 shares for a total of $220,817.

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Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, which engages in developing a pipeline of oncology products to treat genetic and epigenetic drivers of cancer in subsets of cancer patients. Its clinical pipeline consists of glesatinib, sitravatinib and mocetinostat.