Nkarta, Inc. (NASDAQ:NKTX) Receives Consensus Recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from Brokerages

Nkarta, Inc. (NASDAQ:NKTX) has received a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” from the five research firms that are currently covering the company, MarketBeat reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, three have issued a buy recommendation and one has assigned a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 12-month target price among analysts that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $10.75.

NKTX has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Evercore set a $9.00 price objective on shares of Nkarta in a research report on Monday, May 18th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $11.00 target price on shares of Nkarta in a research note on Wednesday, May 13th. Weiss Ratings reissued a “sell (d-)” rating on shares of Nkarta in a research note on Friday, March 27th. Wall Street Zen cut shares of Nkarta from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Saturday, March 28th. Finally, Mizuho lowered their target price on shares of Nkarta from $14.00 to $12.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, March 31st.

Nkarta Price Performance

Nkarta stock opened at $3.14 on Tuesday. The firm has a market cap of $224.65 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.34 and a beta of 0.88. Nkarta has a fifty-two week low of $1.63 and a fifty-two week high of $3.65. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $2.72 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $2.31.

Nkarta (NASDAQ:NKTX) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, May 12th. The company reported ($0.37) earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.39) by $0.02. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Nkarta will post -1.5 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Trading of Nkarta

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company acquired a new position in shares of Nkarta during the first quarter worth approximately $30,000. Rangeley Capital LLC lifted its holdings in Nkarta by 112.0% in the first quarter. Rangeley Capital LLC now owns 68,000 shares of the company’s stock valued at $143,000 after buying an additional 35,922 shares during the period. Renaissance Technologies LLC lifted its holdings in Nkarta by 1.8% in the first quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 1,732,372 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,655,000 after buying an additional 30,350 shares during the period. Sei Investments Co. lifted its holdings in Nkarta by 74.9% in the first quarter. Sei Investments Co. now owns 40,046 shares of the company’s stock valued at $84,000 after buying an additional 17,148 shares during the period. Finally, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its holdings in Nkarta by 74.4% in the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 346,593 shares of the company’s stock valued at $731,000 after buying an additional 147,894 shares during the period. 80.54% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Nkarta Company Profile

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.