Insider Buying Reveals Ra Pharmaceuticals Inc (RARX)

| February 27, 2018

phamaceuticalsRa Pharmaceuticals Inc (Nasdaq: RARX) insiders have bought $42.0 million worth of stock since last Wednesday. It’s worth taking a closer look at the company with the stock down 50% in the last three months.


Insider Buying: Ra Pharmaceuticals

Two insiders have been buying shares of Ra Pharmaceuticals according to recent form 4 filings with the SEC. Notable insiders include New Enterprise Associates (10% owner) and RA Capital Management (10% owner and board member), as shown in the table below. Total insider buying has totaled $42.0 million since last Wednesday which is approximately 17.5% of Ra Pharmaceuticals’s total market capitalization. This activity seems highly significant.

Note that Mr. Rajeev Shah is a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at RA Capital Management.

Recent Ra Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Insider Transactions
Insider Trading Relationship Date #Shares Value ($)
New Enterprise Associates 10% Owner Feb 16 2,000,000 $12,000,000
RA Capital Management Director Feb 14 2,500,000 $15,000,000
Rajeev Shah Director Feb 14 2,500,000 $15,000,000
TOTAL 7,000,000 $42,000,000

New Enterprise Associates (10% Owner) most recently bought $12.0 million worth of shares on Friday, February 16th that was revealed yesterday via a Form 4 filing. This is what propelled me to take a closer look at the company’s insider activity.


Potential Reasons For Insider Activity

Ra Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. The company is engaged in the discovery and development of therapeutics for the treatment of diseases caused by excessive or uncontrolled activation of the complement system in the United States.

Analysts covering the stock often compare the company to a peer group that includes ArQule (Nasdaq: ARQL), Palatin Technologies (NYSEMKT: PTN), Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SBPH) and Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc (Nasdaq: ADAP). Although the pharma company is virtually pre-revenue, it’s still helpful to analyze Ra Pharmaceuticals’ balance sheet ratios relative to its peer group. It may offer helpful insight into why insiders are buying shares.

Debt to Capital measures a company’s current capital structure, financial solvency, and degree of leverage. The higher the percentage, the more debt the company has in its capital structure and the lower the equity cushion. This can be quite meaningful for a company that is not yet making money.

The company currently has no debt on its balance sheet. This compares favorably to ArQule (9.2%) and Palatin Technologies (6.0%).

The Current Ratio is another helpful metric that measures whether a firm is capitalized with enough assets to pay its obligations over the next twelve months by comparing a firm’s current assets to its current liabilities. The current ratio, also referred to as the quick ratio and can be defined as:

Current Ratio = Current Assets / Current Liabilities

While ratios vary by industry and circumstances, a higher ratio is preferred for pre-revenue biotech stocks such as Ra Pharmaceuticals. The company’s current ratio of 62.8x is well above all of its selected comparable public companies: ARQL (16.8x), PTN (3.9x), SBPH (44.1x) and ADAP (23.5x).


Ra Pharma’s Stock Price and Valuation

The company’s shares last traded at $7.02 as of Wednesday, down -67.9% over the last year and 50.0% over the prior three months. While the stock has lost significant value, the recent insider transactions could signal a promising road ahead for shareholders.

Ra Pharmaceuticals Inc

In addition, finbox.io’s average fair value estimate of $16.23 implies 131.2% upside and is calculated from 4 valuation models as shown in the table below. Each analysis uses consensus Wall Street estimates for the projections when available.

Ra Pharmaceuticals Valuation Detail
Analysis Model Fair Value Upside (Downside)
10-yr DCF Revenue Exit $23.60 236.1%
5-yr DCF Revenue Exit $8.98 27.9%
10-yr DCF EBITDA Exit $26.83 282.2%
5-yr DCF EBITDA Exit $5.50 -21.6%
Average $16.23 131.2%

While executives are always happy to tell you all the reasons why their stock is a buy, their actions can tell a different story about the company’s future prospects. A trend of buying activity may indicate that insiders think the stock is going up over the upcoming time period, and are trying to buy before the price rises.

Keep in mind that insider activity is only one aspect of stock research and that there are other important items to consider. I recommend you continue to research Ra Pharmaceuticals to get a more comprehensive view of the company’s fundamentals by looking at:

Valuation: how much upside do shares of Ra Pharma have based on Wall Street’s consensus price target? Take a look at our analyst upside data explorer that compares the company’s upside relative to its peers.

Risk Metrics: what is Ra Pharma’s cash ratio which is used to assess a company’s short-term liquidity. View the company’s cash ratio here.

Risk Metrics: what is Ra Pharma’s Altman Z score? It’s a famous formula used to predict the probability that a firm will go into bankruptcy within two years. View the company’s Altman Z score here.

 

Note: This article was contributed to ValueWalk.com by Brian Dentino, Finbox.io on February 22, 2018.

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Category: Cheap Stocks

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The author of this article is a contributor to ValueWalk.com. ValueWalk is your everyday source of breaking and evergreen news on everything hedge funds and value investing.