Barclays initiates Celldex Therapeutics stock with Underweight rating

Investing.com - Barclays initiated coverage on Celldex Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CLDX) with an Underweight rating and a $25.00 price target. The biotech company, currently valued at $1.78 billion, has seen its stock surge nearly 59% over the past six months. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains strong liquidity with a current ratio of 19.67.

The investment bank expressed concerns about limited upside potential for Celldex through year-end 2026, despite encouraging clinical data for the company’s lead molecule, barzolvolimab, in chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) and chronic inducible urticaria (CIndU). With the company’s next earnings report due on November 5, InvestingPro analysis reveals that four analysts have recently revised their earnings expectations downward.

Barclays cited competitive landscape challenges and safety liabilities for barzolvolimab as key factors limiting upside, noting these issues could worsen based on the design of the CSU Phase 3 study.

While acknowledging potential stock appreciation from upcoming CIndU readouts or Phase 1 CDX-622 data in healthy volunteers anticipated in the second half of 2025, Barclays sees downside risk to prurigo nodularis and atopic dermatitis efficacy updates.

The firm also highlighted concerns about CSU’s risk/benefit profile in 2026 given the high efficacy bar set by competitors like Novartis/Roche’s omalizumab (Xolair), Novartis’s remibrutinib, and clinical competitors such as RAPT’s RPT904.

In other recent news, Celldex Therapeutics has announced promising results for its experimental drug barzolvolimab, which demonstrated strong efficacy in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), irrespective of their baseline immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels. This development was presented at the EADV Congress 2025, highlighting the potential of barzolvolimab to treat all CSU patients regardless of disease subtype. Meanwhile, the company faced a setback as barzolvolimab did not show clinical efficacy in treating eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), despite achieving significant mast cell depletion. Consequently, Celldex has decided not to pursue further development for EoE, leading Canaccord Genuity to lower its price target for the company to $62, while maintaining a Buy rating. Stifel also reiterated its Buy rating with a $58 price target, despite the EoE trial results. Additionally, Cantor Fitzgerald maintained an Overweight rating with a $67 price target, despite the negative EoE trial outcomes. In another development, H.C. Wainwright reiterated a Buy rating for Celldex with a price target of $42, following Novartis’s FDA approval for remibrutinib. These recent developments reflect the mixed outlook for Celldex, with strong potential in CSU treatments but challenges in other areas.

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