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Intellia Therapeutics gets Market Perform rating at Oppenheimer

Last updated: 11:40 02 May 2018 EDT, First published: 11:01 02 May 2018 EDT

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Intellia Therapeutics shares were up nearly 1% in morning trade

Intellia Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA) was assigned a Market Perform rating on Tuesday by analysts at Oppenheimer who called out the potential of the biotech’s revolutionary gene-editing technology.

Intellia Therapeutics is working on CRISPR, a revolutionary technology that can edit genetic mistakes. In 2011, one of Intellia’s founders Jennifer Doudna, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley published a landmark paper introducing the world to CRISPR with former University of Vienna professor Emmanuelle Charpentier.

Also known as CRISPR-Cas9 — the radical gene editing technology has since inspired a billion-dollar boom in biotech investment.

Oppenheimer said Intellia’s ability to get a “stronger patent foothold” would translate into a “significant upside.”

“We believe Intellia is currently in a weaker patent position than competitor Editas Medicine, but this is subject to litigation appeal. We believe that among the CRISPR-based companies, Intellia has the strongest partners,” wrote Oppenheimer analyst Leah Rush Cann in a note to clients.

“We anticipate Intellia Therapeutics will continue to form collaborations for its CRISPR technology and advance its current collaborations into later stages of development,” the analyst added.

According to the analyst’s base case assumption, Intellia which is in early-stage commercialization for its platform technology, and development stage for its clinical programs, will not have a commercial product prior to 2022.

“Therefore, estimate that collaborative agreement payments will continue to be the primary contributor to revenue through 2022. We estimate that Intellia's total revenue will grow at a CAGR of approximately 69.7% for the next five years, increasing to US$367mln in 2022,” wrote Cann.  

The analyst arrived at the US$367mln figure based on Intellia's current collaborative agreements and “assumption that the company will establish additional agreements by 2019 and a second additional agreement by 2021.”

For the quarter ended March 31, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech reported a loss per share of US$0.51 compared to Oppenheimer’s estimate of US$0.44.

“This primarily was the result of higher R&D of US$22.5mln compared to our estimate of US$19.0mln; and was partially offset by higher than expected interest income,” explained the note.

Shares of Intellia Therapeutics were up nearly 1% to US$20.75 in morning trade on Wednesday.

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