Beginning Price: $0.81
Current Price: $6.50
Gain Since Inception: 702%
Upside Potential: 208%
Market Cap: $1,223 million
Beginning Price: $5.53
Current Price: $4.69
Gain Since Inception: -15%
Upside Potential: 219%
Market Cap: $30 million
Our target price on OCGN is based on 25% of NVAX's market cap of $15.72 billion. A market cap of $3.93 billion for OCGN would lead to a stock price of over $20.
Our target price on GOVX is based on 15% of VXRT's market cap of $656 million. A market cap of $98 million would lead to a stock price of over $15.
On December 22, we issued a bullish report on Ocugen, Inc. (OCGN) called "Why Ocugen Is Set To Soar Again Tomorrow". OCGN closed at $0.81 that day after the company announced that it is teaming up with Bharat Biotech to Co-Develop COVAXIN™. The stock has increased 8x since, but was up over 20x before its pull back. We think it's an opportune time to get back into the stock as more good news came today. On February 5, we issued a bullish report on GeoVax Labs, Inc. (GOVX) called "With OCGN On The Rise, GOVX Is The Next COVID Vaccine Stock Ready To Soar". The stock has bounced around wildly between $4 and $8 but sits closer to the lower end of its range despite multiple pieces of news on the horizon, including an update to its COVID vaccine candidate. We think the stock is ready to take off as recent financing has been fully absorbed into the float and GOVX has a very strong balance sheet with $20 million in cash despite having only a $30 million market cap. We are up to 963 followers despite not giving out a lot of alerts, a fact that we think is indicative of a successful, diligent and prudent stock picking history. If you like our picks you can follow our blog by clicking the follow button on the top of the left hand panel as well as follow our Small Caps, Big Gains blog where we put up our Canadian picks. You can also follow us on Twitter @StockTradePicks which has over 5,000 followers.
OCGN rose 18% today and ran another 8% after hours after the company's COVID-19 Vaccine Co-Development Partner, Bharat Biotech, announced interim results of the vaccine:
MALVERN, Pa., April 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ocugen, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCGN), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing gene therapies to cure blindness diseases and developing a vaccine to save lives from COVID-19, today announced that its co-development partner, Bharat Biotech, shared positive results of the second interim analysis of its Phase 3 study of COVAXIN, a whole virion inactivated COVID-19 vaccine candidate. COVAXIN demonstrated a vaccine efficacy in mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 disease of 78% with efficacy against severe COVID-19 disease alone of 100%.
“We continue to be excited by the compelling second interim results of Bharat Biotech’s Phase 3 clinical trial. We believe that COVAXIN can help change the course of this pandemic by preventing severe COVID-19 disease including hospitalizations by 100% as well as significantly limit the spread of asymptomatic COVID-19 infections based on efficacy shown to date. We are dedicated to being a part of the solution to save lives from COVID-19 by bringing COVAXIN to the U.S. market. Based on a traditional vaccine platform that has a long-established safety profile, we believe COVAXIN is an important tool to add to our national arsenal in ending the pandemic,” said Dr. Shankar Musunuri, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-founder of Ocugen.
“The safety and efficacy demonstrated by COVAXIN is remarkable because of the prevalence of several variants of the coronavirus circulating at the time of the trial. This vaccine is based on a proven technology platform and the company plans to consider clinical development in special populations such as children,” said Dr. Bruce Forrest, member of the vaccine scientific advisory board of Ocugen.
Second Interim Phase 3 Results as Reported by Bharat Biotech
Bharat Biotech’s Phase 3 clinical trial enrolled 25,800 participants between 18-91 years of age in India, including 2,433 over the age of 60 and 4,500 with comorbidities. The primary endpoint of the Phase 3 clinical trial is based on the first occurrence of PCR-confirmed symptomatic (mild, moderate, or severe) COVID-19 with onset at least 14 days after the second study vaccination in serologically negative (to SARS-CoV-2) adult participants at baseline.
The second interim analysis is based on accruing more than 87 symptomatic cases of COVID-19. However, due to the recent surge in cases in India, 127 symptomatic cases were recorded, resulting in a point estimate of vaccine efficacy of 78% (95%CI: 61-88) against mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 disease. The trial will be continuing to its pre-planned conclusion.
The efficacy against asymptomatic COVID-19 infection was 70%, based on a subgroup of approximately 8,000 participants who visited the clinical trial site each month for an RT-PCR test.
This is extremely big news considering that this data is out of India, where the country is currently dealing with a massive outbreak of a particularly virulent double mutant strain of COVID known as the B1617 "Indian variant". The vaccines that are currently being administered in the United States have an unknown impact against this variant because they were tested in a pre-variant world. This could lead to absolute massive upside for OCGN to the tune of $10's of billions in market cap. But we are going to be conservative in our approach to a target. The fairest comparable peer would be Novavax, Inc. (NVAX), which is also in a Phase 3 and considered effective against variants. Given that OCGN is a licensing partner, the business model wouldn't be quite as good. However, we think that OCGN is deserving of at least 25% of NVAX's market cap. This would lead to a more than 3x upside to over $20.
OCGN also has the added bonus of being heavily shorted. There are 27 million shares shorted, or about 15% of the float. The GME and AMC meme crowd could easily pick up on this stock and push it way beyond any fair value price to try to crush hedge fund shorts, like what they did with both of those stocks.
GOVX is in pre-trial for its COVID vaccine, but animal test results are expected in Q2. GOVX has several other vaccine data updates due in Q2 including Malaria and Lassa Fever. It also has early stage clinical development for Zika and Ebola and is in Phase 2 for HIV, demonstrating the broad utility of its MVA-VLP technology platform. An analyst report said the following about GOVX's COVID vaccine candidate:
GeoVax’s SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19) vaccine is based on its GV‐MVA‐VLP™ technology, enabling insertion of multiple antigen fragments, potentially allowing for broad‐spectrum virus prevention. In contrast to certain competitor vaccines that only target the COVID‐19 spike protein, GeoVax’s vaccines are designed to provoke a response to multiple COVID‐19 antigens—potentially translating into these vaccines being less susceptible to viral mutations. GeoVax’s vaccines are intended to be used as either a primary vaccine or to boost other COVID‐19 vaccines as part of vaccination strategies to provide immunity to a range of SARS‐CoV‐2 variants.
On January 11, 2021, GeoVax Labs, Inc. announced that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), had awarded the Company a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant in support of its development of a vaccine against SARS‐CoV‐2. The Phase 1 grant, titled, “Preclinical Development of GV‐MVA‐VLP Vaccines Against COVID‐19,” will support the ongoing design, construction, and preclinical testing of GeoVax’s vaccine candidates in preparation for human clinical trials. The efficacy testing will be performed in collaboration with the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).
Additionally, October 26, 2020, the Company announced the signing of a Patent and Biological Materials License Agreement with the NIAID in support of GeoVax’s development of a vaccine against SARS‐CoV‐2. The Patent License Agreement to GeoVax includes access to NIAID’s patent rights in the stabilized SPIKE protein, which is the protein that SARS‐CoV‐2 uses to enter human tissue.
GeoVax has designed and constructed four COVID‐19 vaccine candidates to date, with the goal that one will provide a single‐dose, universal vaccine effective against multiple coronavirus strains. Preclinical small animal studies for the first candidate are currently being conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), with GeoVax anticipating to accelerate small animal testing (with initial results expected near term). Furthermore, GeoVax continues active discussions and negotiations related to additional funding support, as well as securing the necessary manufacturing resources to proceed into clinical development as soon as possible.
Despite their being vaccines that have entered various stages of clinical testing (using different approaches and vector platforms than GeoVax), there is increasing evidence that alternative vaccine approaches, including those from various cohort populations will be necessary to successfully address COVID‐19 and various coronaviruses. GeoVax expects to be ready to move into the clinic with its candidate during 2022. This timing, however, will depend on what the Company reports with its animal results, which could come in the latter part of first quarter or into early part of second quarter.
This is important because GOVX's vaccine technology is far different than existing vaccines out there. The GeoVax vaccine intends to be a one-shot vaccine effective against mutations by provoking a response to multiple COVID‐19 antigens. As we have already seen a rise in the double mutant Indian variant, it's only a matter of time before similar time of mutations appear as well, with the effectiveness of current vaccines being unknown.
GOVX is at the very early stages of COVID vaccine, but considering that it is more than just a COVID vaccine player, we think that it being valued at 15% of the market cap of Vaxart, Inc. (VXRT) is fair. That would lead to a $98 million market cap, or $15 target price.
GOVX also has warrants under the symbol GOVXW. These warrants have a strike price of $5.00 and expire in September 2025, so there is plenty of time. They offer leveraged upside because they trade at $1.14. If the stock price triples to $15, the warrants will be worth $10, or about 8x their current price.
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Microcap Magic: Why The Biggest Returns Are In Stocks You've Never Heard Of
How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner’s Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology
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Stock Investing for Beginners: Marijuana Stocks
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The dividend stock report from dividendstocksonline.com
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