Vaccine maker Ocugen (OCGN -2.73%) has had a tumultuous past 18 months on the stock market. The company's shares soared as it sought to make good on its intentions to enter the COVID-19 vaccine space, but with the delays it has encountered in this area, investors have largely given up.
Except those on Robinhood, the popular trading app. Ocugen features on the list of the 100 most held stocks on the platform. Perhaps that's because, on average, Wall Street analysts have set a price target of $5.83 for the stock (according to Yahoo! Finance), which represents a substantial 217% upside from its current levels.
So is this penny stock worth investing in?
What's going on with Ocugen?
Ocugen primarily focuses on developing therapies for eye-related diseases. But the company decided to pursue opportunities within the lucrative coronavirus vaccine market. Ocugen entered into an agreement with Bharat Biotech, an India-based biotech company that has developed and marketed a coronavirus vaccine called Covaxin in its home country.
Under the terms of the agreement, Ocugen is responsible for commercializing Covaxin in all of North America. However, the eye disease specialist will only keep 45% of the profits associated with the vaccine.
Still, for a company like Ocugen, with a market cap of nearly $400 million, generating revenue of even $100 million from Covaxin would be decent. But there are challenges. Ocugen had planned on earning Emergency Use Authorization in the U.S. and Canada for Covaxin (it has already won that designation in Mexico).
However, authorities in Canada have been sitting on the company's application for more than a year. That sends a major signal: Regulators in Canada are in no hurry to authorize Covaxin. It could be that there is no urgent need for a new vaccine in the country, or Covaxin hasn't proven its safety and efficacy to the standards they demand in the country.
There are other possibilities. Ocugen's application could suffer from some deficiencies. That was the case initially: Canadian authorities flagged some (unnamed) problems with the biotech regulatory submission, but Ocugen claims to have addressed them. Even if there are issues with Ocugen's application, if the situation were more urgent -- and Covaxin was a highly promising candidate -- Canadian regulators likely would have tried to resolve the issue much more quickly.
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