GRTS - Gritstone Oncology downgraded by Baird on 'COVID-19 vaccine Hype'

With the price target unchanged at $8 per share, Baird lowers its recommendation on Gritstone Oncology (GRTS) to Underperform from Outperform, citing a ‘recent substantial upside’ in the stock despite ‘a myriad issues’ that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine development likely to encounter.After a five-day losing streak, the shares have added ~13.7% so far today despite the downgrade. However, the shares have risen ~545.5% for the past 30-day period.Earlier in the day, Gritstone Oncology and Genevant Sciences announced a non-exclusive license agreement whereby Gritstone will have access to Genevant’s LNP technology to develop and commercialize self-amplifying RNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.Baird analysts led by Madhu S. Kumar says the high efficacy achieved by approved COVID-19 vaccines have set the bar high for other developers.While the developers can readily adapt to new vaccine resistant variants, based on a proprietary epitope prediction analysis for spike protein, the analysts expect that the emerging new variants are unlikely to

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Gritstone Oncology downgraded by Baird on ‘COVID-19 vaccine Hype’