Altimmune Stock Surges, Kerrisdale Remains Short: What You Need To Know

Altimmune Inc ALT shares are trading higher Monday despite a lack of company-specific news. The stock has experienced elevated levels of volatility in recent months. Here’s a look at what’s going on.

What To Know:  Altimmune reported positive results in early December showing that patients taking a dose of its pemvidutide lost 15.6% of their total weight after 48 weeks. Shares soared following the update from the company.

Earlier this month, Kerrisdale Capital announced a short position in the stock, claiming the company had little chance of competing against others in the GLP-1 space and calling it an “obvious dead end.”

“Even if pemvidutide did result in 15.6% weight-loss, that’s not good enough,” Kerrisdale said at the time.

Altimmune shares have been volatile since Kerrisdale announced the short position a couple of weeks ago. Despite falling significantly on the short report, the stock has recovered in recent sessions and is now trading above where it was when the bearish report was first released. Kerrisdale Capital told Benzinga on Monday that the firm is still short Altimmune stock.

Altimmune is expected to report fourth-quarter financial results in early March, although a date has not yet been confirmed by the company. Altimmune is expected to report a loss of 43 cents per share and quarterly revenue of approximately $2,140, according to Benzinga Pro.

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ALT Stock Forecast In 2030

Predicting the future in stock prices over long periods of time is challenging. Wall Street analysts use complex models that take into account interest rates, economic growth, competitive advantages, management teams and historical profitability, among a host of other factors.

If, as an investor, you want to assume most of the major factors remain stable, you can use trend analysis as a helpful tool. Using a longer term trend line or historical performance of the stock, you can aim to forecast a stock's annual rate of return.

For Altimmune, over the past five years, its annualized stock performance is 26.59%, and if you assume that trend continues for another five years, you can expect a stock to trade at $36.34.

Using a trend line (see how to perform this function here), If you choose to use a trend line, connect your two points and look into the future to the point in time in which you're curious. Once you've identified that stock price, you may want to consider what type of conditions would need to exist for the stock to justify the share price – be it an outside influence or managerial decision making.

ALT Price Action: Altimmune shares were up 20.5% at $11.05 at the time of writing, according to Benzinga Pro.

Photo: 3844328 from Pixabay.