Ventyx Biosciences (NASDAQ: VTYX) stock surged almost 70% on Wednesday after Piper Sandler unveiled a $21 price target for the clinical-stage biotech company.
Yasmeen Rahimi, the analyst at Piper Sandler, bestowed an Overweight rating on VTYX, underscoring its promising outlook in the burgeoning obesity market, which is currently dominated by industry behemoths such as Eli Lilly (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO).
Rahimi’s analysis focused on Ventyx’s drug, dubbed VTX3232, which holds great potential.
She argued that a similar drug from a privately held biotech company called NodThera showed weight loss results comparable to Novo Nordisk’s obesity therapy semaglutide – the chemical compound in Ozempic and Wegov, in pre-clinical studies recently.
Rahimi wrote,
“Overall, we believe this represents a strong positive read-through to VTYX, which has their VTX3232 currently in development for neuroinflammatory disorders like Parkinson’s disease.”
Wall Street has yet to evaluate the potential of VTX3232. Still, she noted,
“We believe this asset provides major upside in the blockbuster obesity space.”
Her bullish view comes amidst the ongoing Phase 1 trial for VTX3232 in healthy volunteers, with anticipated data release in the first quarter of 2024.
Ventyx (NASDAQ: VTYX) Stock Reaction
VTYX stock soared 68.56% to close at $5.04 on Wednesday. The traders had exchanged hands with 87,450,920 (87.45 million) shares compared to the average daily trading volume of 2.30 million.
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