Analyst Remain Bullish While OvaScience Posts Losses in Q4 Report

Ovascience (NASDAQ:OVAS) released its fourth quarter and year-end earnings for 2014 on March 16. The commercial fertility treatment company also provided updates on its newest treatments; AUGMENT, OvaPrime, and OvaTure. Additionally, OvaScience proudly announced that CEO and Co-Founder Michelle Dipp, M.D., Ph.D., was elected to join the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders.

Highlights from OvaScience’s fourth quarter report include a net loss of $18.9 million, a widened loss from the same quarter of last year when the company posted a loss of $11 million. OvaScience posted a loss of ($0.79) per share, missing the analyst estimate of a loss of ($0.57) per share, and representing a widened loss from the same quarter of last year when the company posted a loss of ($0.64) per share.

In the fourth quarter, OvaScience launched AUGMENT in select IVF clinics in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Turkey. OvaScience’s AUGMENT treatment aims to strengthen the health of eggs for women undergoing in vitro fertilization, or IVF. OvaScience expects 1,000 cycles of the treatment to be in process by the end of 2015. Initial clinical data from AUGMENT will be presented later this month at the Society for Reproductive Investigation’s 62nd Annual Scientific Meeting in San Francisco. However, OvaScience does not expect the treatment to earn significant revenue until the second half of 2015.

OvaScience is currently developing OvaPrime; a treatment aimed at increasing the number of eggs a woman can produce. OvaPrime is scheduled to be introduced to specific clinics by the end of 2015. Additionally, OvaTure is in development, which will allow eggs to mature outside a woman’s body thus eliminating the need for hormone injections.

On March 17, analyst Gena Wang of Leerink Partners reiterated an Outperform rating on OvaSciences with a $56 price target. Wang noted that OvaScience is on track to launch AUGMENT in 2015 but added that “revenue for 2015 likely will be back-end loaded due to a delay in revenue recognition.” Wang predicts that OvaPrime and OvaTure will garner attention after the AUGMENT launch because both “represent significant commercial opportunities.”

Gena Wang rated OvaScience once before in November 2014 with a Buy rating when shares were nearly $25. Shares closed at approximately $44 yesterday, earning Wang a 35.8% success rate recommending the company.



Separately on March 17, analyst Rohit Vanjani maintained an Outperform rating on OvaScience with a price target of $60. Vanjani is familiar with the AUGMENT treatment and discussed it in an interview with The Life Sciences Report in January.

Vanjani has rated the fertility treatment company 10 times since May 2014. Although he has a 33% success rate recommending the stock, he has a +20.6% average return per OvaScience recommendation. Overall, Vanjani has an 83% success rate recommending stocks with a +48% average return per recommendation.



Overall, the top analyst consensus for OvaScience on TipRanks is Strong Buy.