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How The Rally in Biocon Caught Analysts Off Guard

Analysts are now playing catch-up on the Biocon rally.



A technician works at Biocon Ltd.’s cancer drug facility in Bangalore (Photographer: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg)
A technician works at Biocon Ltd.’s cancer drug facility in Bangalore (Photographer: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg)
How The Rally in Biocon Caught Analysts Off Guard

Did analysts miss the rally in Biocon? Bloomberg’s analyst ratings indicate that most of them did. Of the 22 Biocon analysts Bloomberg tracks, only 28 percent had a ‘Buy’ rating on the stock in July 2015. That number has only now gone up to 10. That is, in July 2016, 45 percent of the 22 analysts have rated the stock a ‘Buy’.

But the rally in Biocon’s shares began in April 2016, and since then the stock has risen 69 percent, outperforming the Nifty Pharma index’s 5.8 percent rise and BSE Healthcare’s 7 percent gain. Many analysts missed the bus on that one.

As is evident here, the consensus analyst target price (which is the blue line) has lagged the stock price performance (the white line) suggesting that many analysts seem to have missed estimating the recent rally.

Analysts are now playing catch-up. As of today, of the 15 analysts who have shared their updated price targets after the first quarter earnings were announced last week, only 12 have a target price above today’s market price of around Rs 820.