Guardant Health (GH) To Report Q1 Earnings: What's In Store?

Guardant Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:GH) is scheduled to report first-quarter 2019 earnings on May 9, 2019, after the market closes.

On Oct 4, 2018, the company went public through an initial public offering and started trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol of GH.

In the last reported quarter, Guardant Health delivered a positive surprise of 16.67%.

Shares of Guardant Health have soared 84.9% so far this year, outperforming the industry’s increase of 5.1%.

Let’s see, how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors to Consider

Guardant Health’s top line mainly comprises revenues generated from its Precision oncology testing and development services. The company’s liquid biopsy-based Guardant360 and GuardantOMNI tests are designed for advanced stage cancer patients, using its LUNAR-1 and LUNAR-2 programs for minimal residual disease/recurrence monitoring and an early detection screening, respectively.

In February this year, Guardant Health announced positive results from the NILE study, a head-to-head comparison of the Guardant360 assay with the standard-of-care tissue testing for identifying the first-line advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study met the primary endpoint that supports utilization of Guardant360 testing ahead of tissue testing.

We expect management to provide an update on the same during the upcoming investors’ call.

Earlier this January, Guardant Health launched the LUNAR assay for detection of early-stage cancer and disease recurrence for biopharmaceutical and academic researchers. We await latest news on the initial uptake of this test during the first-quarter conference call.

Last December, the company announced an agreement with AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) to support the development of Guardant360 and GuardantOMNI assays in blood-based companion diagnostic tests for AstraZeneca’s EGFR inhibitors, Tagrisso and Imfinzi, respectively.

Application of this assay will help identify patients, who might respond to Tagrisso via a minimally-invasive blood test. We expect management to provide an update on the same during the impending earnings call.

Earnings Whispers

The proven Zacks model does not conclusively show that Guardant Health is likely to beat on earnings this reporting cycle. 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. But that is not the case here as you will see below.

Earnings ESP: Guardant Health has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. This is because the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate are pegged at a loss of 35 cents each. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

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

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are a few health care stocks worth considering as our model shows that these have the right mix of elements to beat estimates this time around.

Aduro Biotech, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADRO) has a Zacks Rank #2 and an Earnings ESP of +82.00%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Horizon Pharma Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:HZNP) has a Zacks Rank #3 and an Earnings ESP of +25.00%. The company is scheduled to report first-quarter 2019 results on May 8.

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