Juno (JUNO) Q1 Earnings: What's In Store For The Stock?

Juno Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:JUNO) will be reporting first-quarter 2016 results on May 9, after the market closes. Juno, which started trading from Dec 2014, had posted in-line results in the last quarter. Let’s see how things are shaping up for this quarter.

Pipeline in Focus

With no approved products in its portfolio, Juno does not generate any product revenues. As a result, investor focus will be primarily on the company’s cash burn and pipeline updates. At the time of releasing fourth-quarter results, Juno had said that it expects cash burn of $220 million to $250 million in 2016.

Juno is looking to revolutionize cancer treatments by engaging the body’s immune system to treat cancer and is developing cell-based cancer immunotherapies based on CAR and high-affinity TCR technologies. This is a hot therapeutic area with huge commercial potential.

Juno is among the major players in the field of T-cell-based immunotherapy and has pipeline candidates like JCAR015, JCAR017 and JCAR014 which use CAR T cell technology to target CD19.

JCAR015 is in a phase II study in relapsed/refractory adult B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (r/r ALL) patients that could support accelerated approval in the U.S. in 2017.

Another interesting candidate is JCAR017 which performed well in the phase I part of a phase I/II study in pediatric patients with r/r ALL. The candidate demonstrated the highest cell expansion and longest cell persistence in patients among all of Juno’s CD19-directed pipeline candidates – this could lead to improved clinical benefit. JCAR017 is also in a study for certain types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Meanwhile, Juno has collaborations with companies like Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ:CELG) for the global development and commercialization of immunotherapies.

Surprise History

Juno has a mixed record with the company posting a positive surprise in one quarter, in-line results in two quarters and missing expectations in the remaining quarter. The average earnings surprise over the last four quarters is +0.67%.

Earnings Whispers?

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Juno is likely to beat earnings estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here, as you will see below.

Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP for Juno is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate are a loss of 67 cents per share.

Zacks Rank: Juno carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Juno’s Zacks Rank #3 when combined with an ESP of 0.00% makes surprise prediction difficult.

We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Stocks to Consider

Here are some health care stocks you may want to consider as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a beat this quarter.

The Earnings ESP for OvaScience, Inc. (NASDAQ:OVAS) is +6.67% and it carries a Zacks Rank #3. The company is expected to release first-quarter results on May 5.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:JAZZ) has an Earnings ESP of +6.11% and carries a Zacks Rank #3. It will be reporting first-quarter results on May 10.

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