Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) Shares Gap Down Following Analyst Downgrade

Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN) gapped down prior to trading on Tuesday after Guggenheim lowered their price target on the stock from $17.00 to $15.00. The stock had previously closed at $7.43, but opened at $7.28. Guggenheim currently has a buy rating on the stock. Valneva shares last traded at $7.03, with a volume of 5,928 shares trading hands.

Separately, HC Wainwright reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $17.00 price target on shares of Valneva in a research report on Friday, March 21st.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Valneva

A hedge fund recently bought a new stake in Valneva stock. ABC Arbitrage SA purchased a new stake in Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN) during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund purchased 19,244 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $84,000. 11.39% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Valneva Price Performance

The stock has a fifty day moving average of $6.45 and a two-hundred day moving average of $5.59. The stock has a market cap of $574.52 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -54.38 and a beta of 1.93. The company has a quick ratio of 2.25, a current ratio of 2.78 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.70.

Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 20th. The company reported ($0.54) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.22) by ($0.32). Valneva had a negative net margin of 4.35% and a negative return on equity of 3.93%. The company had revenue of $56.48 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $55.64 million. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Valneva SE will post 0.13 earnings per share for the current year.

About Valneva

Valneva SE, a specialty vaccine company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases with unmet needs. It offers IXIARO, an inactivated Vero cell culture-derived Japanese encephalitis vaccine indicated for active immunization against Japanese encephalitis; DUKORAL, an oral vaccine for the prevention of diarrhea caused by Vibrio cholera and/or heat-labile toxin producing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli bacterium; IXCHIQ, a single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine for the prevention of disease caused by chikungunya virus; and VLA2001, an inactivated whole-virus COVID-19 vaccine.