Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) Shares Gap Up – Time to Buy?

Valneva SE (NASDAQ:VALN) gapped up before the market opened on Monday . The stock had previously closed at $6.27, but opened at $6.40. Valneva shares last traded at $6.47, with a volume of 1,348 shares traded.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several analysts have issued reports on VALN shares. HC Wainwright reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $17.00 target price on shares of Valneva in a research note on Tuesday, April 15th. Guggenheim reduced their price target on Valneva from $15.00 to $14.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, May 8th.

Valneva Trading Up 0.2%

The company has a 50-day moving average price of $6.69 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $5.76. The stock has a market cap of $525.23 million, a P/E ratio of -48.31 and a beta of 1.85. The company has a current ratio of 2.78, a quick ratio of 2.25 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.70.

Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 7th. The company reported ($0.13) earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.40) by $0.27. Valneva had a negative return on equity of 3.93% and a negative net margin of 4.35%. The firm had revenue of $51.79 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $41.80 million. On average, research analysts expect that Valneva SE will post 0.13 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of Valneva

Large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. ABC Arbitrage SA purchased a new position in shares of Valneva during the 4th quarter worth $84,000. GAMMA Investing LLC acquired a new stake in Valneva in the 1st quarter valued at about $94,000. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company MN raised its position in Valneva by 14.3% in the 4th quarter. Wells Fargo & Company MN now owns 246,766 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,079,000 after purchasing an additional 30,859 shares in the last quarter. 11.39% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.