Why Legend Biotech Stock Crushed the Market on Monday
Key Points
This followed a sizable acquisition of a peer biotech by a pharmaceutical sector giant.
Legend has innovative science backing its oncology drug development efforts.
Legend Biotech (NASDAQ: LEGN) was one of the healthier healthcare stocks on the market as the trading week kicked off on Monday. Not one, but two, bullish analyst updates helped propel the biotech stock to a sturdy 18% gain on Monday, a performance that sharply contrasted with the 0.2% slump of the S&P 500 index.
A pharmaceutical giant swoops
That morning, both H.C. Wainwright's Mitchell Kapoor and RBC Capital's Leonid Timashev reiterated their equivalents of buy recommendations on Legend. Of the pair, Timashev is the more bullish, as his price target is $62 per share, while Kapoor's is $50.
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According to reports, the RBC prognosticator was inspired by Eli Lilly's announcement early Monday that it is buying clinical-stage oncology drug developer Kelonia Therapeutics in a deal potentially worth up to $7 billion. Like Kelonia, Legend harnesses chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CAR-T) in its investigational drugs.
As for H.C. Wainwright's Kapoor, according to reports, he waxed bullish in his update about the generally encouraging progress of all Legend pipeline programs. He noted that data from an early stage in vivo trial of the company's CD19/CD20 should be published in the near future. If successful, this form of therapy could hold great promise for the treatment of certain cancers.
Potentially legendary
It's understandable that, as Timashev pointed out, the Eli Lilly/Kelonia deal sparked excitement about Legend's future. For once, though, this isn't just hope or hype -- Legend has innovative, very promising science supporting its pipeline programs. This is absolutely a biotech to watch, in my view, purely on the strength of those programs.
Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Legend Biotech. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.