Biopharm Stock Prediction: KERX Developing New Ways to Treat Patients With CKD

This article was written by Blair Goldenberg, a Financial Analyst at I Know First, and enrolled in a Masters of Finance at Colorado State University.

Biopharm Stock Prediction

Summary

  • Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (KERX) Stock Analysis
  • KERX Helping Patients Around the US
  • I Know First Algorithm Bullish Forecast For KERX

Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (KERX) Stock Analysis

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Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (KERX) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative medicines that provide unique and meaningful advantages to people with renal disease and their healthcare providers. In September 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Keryx’s first medicine, Auryxia® (ferric citrate) tablets. Patients have been and continue to be at the center of our 17-year corporate history.

KERX will report their Q4 earnings on March 14, 2017. Since their Q3 earnings, the stock has gone up 21% from $4.79 or a $1.28 gain from its current position at $6.07 per share. The history of KERX hasn’t been impressive, in the last four quarters, the earnings surprise totals -43.03% and last quarter there was a drop of $0.39 per share. However, revenue for the company came in strong at $6.34 million as opposed to the estimated $5.45 million which then led the stock to rise 13.36% following the release of Q3 earnings. After seven days, due to the increase in revenue, the share price went up a total of 33.82%. With all that said, Q2’s earnings were much higher than Q3. As of August 1, 2016, the revenue for the specific quarter totaled $9.29 million, $720,000 above the predicted figure of $8.57 million. That means that between Q2 and Q3, revenue dropped $2.95 million. Price per share also dropped $0.42, which was -$0.13 less than the consensus among analysts.

Analysts predict that KERX will report -$0.21 per share in Q4 with a consensus rating ranging from -$0.26-$0.12 and with revenue predictions ranging from $2.15 million 5o $7.84 million.

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On December 23, 2016, there were about 226,487 trades on KERX and Zacks has scored the company at “top momentum” which could mean the stock will move quickly either up or down in the near future. The rating on KERX by Zacks is a 2.38 within the 1-5 range, where 1 is a strong buy rating and a 5 is a strong sell rating.

KERX Helping Patients Around the US

KERX announced their case study for Auryxia at ASN’s Kidney Week. Patients who participated in the case study were said to “achieve target serum phosphorus levels within six months of treatment” Retrieved from BloombergAuryxia is a drug used for patients on dialysis due to kidney issues. The drug itself is revolutionary because as John Neylan, M.D. and chief medical officer of Keryx has said, the drug is the first source of evidence pointing to treating hyperphosphatemia on dialysis patients.

The case study reviewed 92 patients within 7 different healthcare providers at many different clinics within the United States. The patients that were chosen had chronic kidney disease and were on dialysis, the patients also had been taking Keryx’s Auryxia for at least a 6 month period. Records show that after the 6 month period, 65% of the patients reached the serum phosphorus levels that are within the KDOQI guideline range.

Auryxia has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration since September of 2014 and continues to be the driving force for leveling out of serum phosphorus levels in chronic kidney disease patients on dialysis in the country.

On December 22, 2016, KERX announced that they will webcast their corporate presentation at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference on January 11, 2017. The webcast will begin at 2:30 PM PST or 5:30 PM EST and the link to the webcast can be found here if investors are interested in hearing more about KERX operations. The webcast will be up for only 15 days following its release.

I Know First Algorithm Bullish Forecast For KERX

I Know First currently maintains a bullish stance on KERX with signal strength 466.99 and predictability 0.77 for 1 year forecast.

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In the past I Know First was also bullish on KERX. This bullish forecast on KERX was sent to current I Know First subscribers on November 6, 2016, where KERX had a signal of 29.22 and a predictability of 0.34. KERX reached 38.39% in returns.

I Know First Algorithm Heatmap Explanation

The sign of the signal tells in which direction the asset price is expected to go (positive = to go up = Long, negative = to drop = Short position), the signal strength is related to the magnitude of the expected return and is used for ranking purposes of the investment opportunities.

Predictability is the actual fitness function being optimized every day, and can be simplified explained as the correlation based quality measure of the signal. This is a unique indicator of the I Know First algorithm, allowing the user to separate and focus on the most predictable assets according to the algorithm. Ranging between -1 and 1, one should focus on predictability levels significantly above 0 in order to fill confident about/trust the signal.

Conclusion

Despite the negative figures on KERX, the proven success of Auryxia may push the company forward. As more and more patients begin taking the drug to treat hyperphosphatemia, the better off the biopharmaceutical company will be. I Know First maintains a bullish stance for the company and has in the past, leading to strong returns.