One of the standouts of today's morning trading session was Viking Therapeutics, which logged a 3.4% performance and outperformed the S&P 500 by 3.0%. The Pharmaceutical stock is now trading at $70.47 per share and may still have upside potential because it is still -37.94% under its average target price of $113.55. Analysts have set target prices ranging from $90.0 to $138.0 dollars per share, and have given the stock an average rating of buy.
The market, on the other hand, is a bit more pessimistic. Viking Therapeutics's short interest -- meaning the percentage of its share float that is being shorted on an expectation of a price decline -- is quite high at 20.8%. The float includes only shares that are available for public trading, and excludes preferred shares.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and then selling them at current market prices. In the successful version of the strategy, the shares are purchased at a lower price at some time in the future. The investor then returns the shares to the lender, and keeps the profit made on the sell/buy transaction.
Another way to gauge the sentiment on Viking Therapeutics is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 75.2% of the shares are held by pension, mutual, and hedge funds, which shows that these institutions probably have strong confidence in the stock.
If institutions are invested in a particular stock, it shows in most cases that they have performed quality research and concluded that it is a good investment. In some cases, however, increases in institutional ownership could be a sign of a takeover attempt or proxy fight, which can actually injure share prices. Also, institutions are not infallible, and can certainly make miscalculations -- often with spectacular results.
In conclusion, we see mixed market sentiment regarding Viking Therapeutics because of an analyst consensus of strong upside potential, a buy rating, an unusually large proportion of its shares sold short, and an average number of institutional investors. At Market Inference, we believe that any investment decision should be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the company's fundamental values and a comparison with similar stocks.
Here's a snapshot of some important facts to keep in mind about VKTX:
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The stock has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $-0.93
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Viking Therapeutics has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of -75.8 compared to the S&P 500 average of 28.21
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The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 8.48 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 4.71
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Viking Therapeutics is a Health Care company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 27.61 and 3.69 respectively
