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

Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN)’s stock price 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 changing hands.

Separately, HC Wainwright restated a “buy” rating and issued a $17.00 price objective on shares of Valneva in a research note on Friday.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A hedge fund recently raised its stake in Valneva stock. Wells Fargo & Company MN lifted its stake in shares of Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN) by 14.3% during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 246,766 shares of the company’s stock after purchasing an additional 30,859 shares during the quarter. Wells Fargo & Company MN owned 0.30% of Valneva worth $1,079,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 11.39% of the company’s stock.

Valneva Stock Performance

The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $6.40 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $5.59. The company has a market cap of $580.61 million, a P/E ratio of -54.96 and a beta of 1.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.70, a quick ratio of 2.25 and a current ratio of 2.78.

Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 20th. The company reported ($0.54) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate 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 business had revenue of $56.48 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $55.64 million. As a group, equities analysts predict 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.