Analysts Expect Breakeven On The Horizon For Protagonist Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:PTGX)
Protagonist Therapeutics Inc’s (NASDAQ:PTGX): Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on discovering and developing peptide-based chemical entities to address various unmet medical needs. The company’s loss has recently broadened since it announced a -US$37.73M loss in the full financial year, compared to the latest trailing-twelve-month loss of -US$45.15M, moving it further away from breakeven. The most pressing concern for investors is PTGX’s path to profitability – when will it breakeven? I’ve put together a brief outline of industry analyst expectations for PTGX, its year of breakeven and its implied growth rate.
Check out our latest analysis for Protagonist Therapeutics
According to the industry analysts covering PTGX, breakeven is near. They expect the company to post a final loss in 2019, before turning a profit of US$33.69M in 2020. PTGX is therefore projected to breakeven around 2 years from today. In order to meet this breakeven date, I calculated the rate at which PTGX must grow year-on-year. It turns out an average annual growth rate of 12.03% is expected, which is relatively reasonable. However, if this rate turns out to be too buoyant, PTGX may become profitable later than analysts predict.
Given this is a high-level overview, I won’t go into detail the detail of PTGX’s upcoming projects, but, bear in mind that generally biotechs, depending on the stage of product development, have irregular periods of cash flow. This means a double-digit growth rate is not unusual, especially if the company is currently in an investment period.
Before I wrap up, there’s one aspect worth mentioning. PTGX currently has no debt on its balance sheet, which is quite unusual for a cash-burning biotech, which usually has a high level of debt relative to its equity. This means that PTGX has been operating purely on its equity investment and has no debt burden. This aspect reduces the risk around investing in the loss-making company.
Next Steps:
There are key fundamentals of PTGX which are not covered in this article, but I must stress again that this is merely a basic overview. For a more comprehensive look at PTGX, take a look at PTGX’s company page on Simply Wall St. I’ve also compiled a list of key aspects you should look at:
Historical Track Record: What has PTGX’s performance been like over the past? Go into more detail in the past track record analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of our analysis for more clarity.
Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look at who sits on Protagonist Therapeutics’s board and the CEO’s back ground.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
