Needham & Company LLC Reaffirms “Buy” Rating for Nkarta (NASDAQ:NKTX)

Nkarta (NASDAQ:NKTX)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reissued by investment analysts at Needham & Company LLC in a research note issued to investors on Wednesday,Benzinga reports. They presently have a $11.00 target price on the stock. Needham & Company LLC’s price target points to a potential upside of 235.37% from the stock’s current price.

Several other equities analysts have also recently issued reports on the company. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “sell (d-)” rating on shares of Nkarta in a research report on Friday, March 27th. Wall Street Zen cut Nkarta from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Saturday, March 28th. Finally, Mizuho decreased their target price on Nkarta from $14.00 to $12.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, March 31st. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $11.33.

Nkarta Trading Up 3.1%

Shares of NASDAQ NKTX opened at $3.28 on Wednesday. The company has a market cap of $233.83 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.34 and a beta of 0.88. Nkarta has a 12-month low of $1.63 and a 12-month high of $3.65. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $2.57 and its 200 day simple moving average is $2.22.

Nkarta (NASDAQ:NKTX) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, May 12th. The company reported ($0.37) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.39) by $0.02. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Nkarta will post -1.51 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Peapod Lane Capital LLC lifted its position in shares of Nkarta by 0.7% in the fourth quarter. Peapod Lane Capital LLC now owns 676,199 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,251,000 after buying an additional 4,933 shares during the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC lifted its position in shares of Nkarta by 35.0% in the third quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 23,663 shares of the company’s stock worth $49,000 after buying an additional 6,141 shares during the last quarter. BNP Paribas Financial Markets lifted its position in shares of Nkarta by 4.0% in the second quarter. BNP Paribas Financial Markets now owns 231,081 shares of the company’s stock worth $384,000 after buying an additional 8,968 shares during the last quarter. Abel Hall LLC lifted its position in shares of Nkarta by 65.4% in the first quarter. Abel Hall LLC now owns 24,113 shares of the company’s stock worth $51,000 after buying an additional 9,535 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Nkarta by 0.8% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,208,378 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,006,000 after buying an additional 10,065 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 80.54% of the company’s stock.

About Nkarta

Nkarta, Inc is a clinical-stage biotechnology company specializing in the development of off-the-shelf natural killer (NK) cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. Leveraging proprietary activation and expansion technologies, Nkarta aims to harness the innate tumor-killing properties of NK cells while incorporating targeted immuno-engineering approaches to enhance safety, potency and persistence in patients. The company’s platform supports both allogeneic cell manufacturing and genetic modifications to generate chimeric antigen receptor-expressing NK cell candidates designed to address a range of hematologic and solid tumors.

Nkarta’s lead program, NKX019, is an anti-CD19 CAR-NK cell therapy in early-phase clinical trials for relapsed or refractory B-cell malignancies.