VKTX
Beat on the bottom line, miss on the vibe
Viking Therapeutics did what companies love to brag about: it beat expectations. The Q2 loss came in at $1.10 per share, better than the $1.25 analysts were modeling. But the market looked at the bigger picture and basically said, “Cool story, show me the drugs.”
The bill for progress
Research and development spending nearly doubled to $115.8 million from $60.2 million a year earlier, as Viking poured money into clinical trials, personnel, and outside advisors. That helped push the quarterly loss wider than last year, and it also shaved cash and short-term investments down to $502 million from $706 million at the start of the year.
Pipeline is the real stock driver
The good news? The obesity pipeline is still very much alive:
- Both VANQUISH Phase 3 studies for subcutaneous VK2735 are fully enrolled
- A maintenance-dosing study is expected to read out before the end of September
- The oral VK2735 program previously showed up to 12.2% weight loss over 13 weeks in Phase 2
That’s the kind of setup that can keep a biotech stock moving even when earnings themselves are just a warm-up act. Canaccord’s Edward Nash kept a Buy rating and raised his price target to $114 from $107, which is Wall Street’s way of saying the story still has legs.
Big picture: Viking doesn’t need perfect earnings right now — it needs clean data. And in biotech, data is the whole ballgame.