Take off with Cerus Corp. (CERS): Get ready for trading

Cerus Corp. (NASDAQ: CERS) stock jumped 1.16% on Friday to $1.75 against a previous-day closing price of $1.73. With 1.08 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 1.09 million shares. During the session, the Medical Devices company that operates in wider Healthcare sector, reached to the highest price of $1.7600 whereas the lowest price it dropped to was $1.6950. The 52-week range on CERS shows that it touched its highest point at $4.25 and its lowest point at $1.21 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $4.12. Beta for the stock currently stands at 1.23.

Price Performance and Earnings:

Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of CERS was up-trending over the past week, with a rise of 9.38%, but this was up by 40.00% over a month. Three-month performance surged to 2.94% while six-month performance fell -6.91%. The stock lost -55.70% in the past year, while it has lost -52.05% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for CERS yields -0.28 with Next year EPS estimates of -0.11. For the next quarter, that number is -0.02. This implies an EPS growth rate of 9.37% for this year and 50.57% for next year.

Float and Shares Shorts:

At present, 177.58 million CERS shares are outstanding with a float of 174.97 million shares on hand for trading. On Oct 30, 2023, short shares totaled 6.24 million, which was 3.44% higher than short shares on Sep 28, 2023. In addition to Mr. William M. Greenman as the firm’s President, CEO & Director, Mr. Kevin D. Green serves as its VP of Finance & CFO.

Institutional Ownership:

Other institutions hold 6.33% of CERS, in contrast to 41.11% held by mutual funds. Shares owned by individuals account for 36.70%. As the largest shareholder in CERS with 11.10% of the stake, ARK Investment Management LLC holds 20,061,906 shares worth 20,061,906. A second-largest stockholder of CERS, Baker Bros. Advisors LP, holds 19,082,012 shares, controlling over 10.55% of the firm’s shares. BlackRock Fund Advisors is the third largest shareholder in CERS, holding 11,853,228 shares or 6.56% stake. With a 6.93% stake in CERS, the ARK Innovation ETF is the largest stakeholder. A total of 12,535,270 shares are owned by the mutual fund manager. The PRIMECAP Odyssey Aggressive Growt, which owns about 4.76% of CERS stock, is the second-largest Mutual Fund holder. It holds 8,613,000 shares valued at 12.06 million. Nikko AM Global Umbrella Fund – A holds 3.77% of the stake in CERS, owning 6,810,496 shares worth 9.53 million.

Analysts Ratings:

Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for CERS since 0 analysts follow the stock currently. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential. With CERS analysts setting a high price target of $6.00 and a low target of $2.50, the average target price over the next 12 months is $4.13. Based on these targets, CERS could surge 242.86% to reach the target high and rise by 42.86% to reach the target low. Reaching the average price target will result in a growth of 136.0% from current levels.

Summary of Insider Activity:

Insiders traded CERS stock several times over the past three months with 2 Buys and 0 Sells. In these transactions, 17,500 shares were bought while 0 shares were sold. The number of buy transactions has increased to 34 while that of sell transactions has risen to 15 over the past year. The total number of shares bought during that period was 2,324,377 while 172,240 shares were sold.