Investing

Earnings Previews: Corbus Pharmaceuticals, Yalla

Paul Ausick

Published: March 11, 2021 1:07 pm

As usual, no earnings reports are scheduled for release on Friday afternoon. And with just two weeks to go in the first calendar quarter of 2021, there are only two earnings reports that we think are worth your notice before markets open Monday morning.

This week’s earnings reports dwindle to just two of note, with one due Thursday afternoon and the other before markets open Friday.

Thursday morning’s noteworthy reports included JD.com, which beat both revenue and profit estimates. Wednesday evening’s releases included Ballard Power, which posted a wider-than-expected loss and smaller-than-expected revenue, and Oracle beat estimates for both top-and bottom-line estimates.

After markets close Thursday and before they open Friday morning, DocuSign and JinkoSolar are scheduled to report results.

Of the two companies reporting early Monday morning, the smaller one (by market cap) is Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: CRBP). The company’s market cap is just $180 million or so, but it trades more than 15 million shares a day.

The share price fell by more than 75% in early September of 2020 following a failed late-stage trial of a cannabinoid treatment for dermatomyositis, an autoimmune disease. For the year to date, the stock is up almost 69%, but the share price is around $2.17 and more than $9 lower than it was before the shares plummeted.

The stock trades above its consensus price target of $1.65, but about 38% below the high price target of $3.00 a share. Since the share price collapse, five analysts have downgraded the stock from Buy to Hold and two have downgraded the stock from Outperform to Market or Sector Perform. One analyst has a Buy rating on the stock, along with the $3 price target.

For the fourth quarter of the 2020 fiscal year, Corbus is expected to post a loss of $0.25 per share on sales of $1.5 million, a drop of 42% in sales, and an improvement of around 38% in the year over year loss. For the full year, the company is expected to post a loss of $1.61 per share, $0.49 per share worse than in 2019 on sales of $4.77 million, almost 90% below year-ago revenue.

Given the daily average volume of trading, this stock, which traded up more than 3.3% Thursday, may be worth keeping an eye on as earnings day approaches.

The larger of the two companies reporting earnings Monday morning is Yalla Group Ltd. (NYSE: YALA), a voice-centric social networking and entertainment platform based in Dubai. The company, which came public on the New York Stock Exchange last September, has a market cap of around $3.2 billion and trades around 2.5 million shares a day. From the IPO date until the end of 2020, the stock price doubled, and it has risen another 58% since the beginning of the year, even including a sharp decline in mid-February.

Only three analysts have ratings on the stock, and two are at the equivalent of Hold. The other analyst has Buy rating on the stock. The average price target is $11 a share, and the high target is $14 a share. The stock traded Thursday at around $22.40 a share.

Estimates for the December quarter call for earnings per share of $0.12 on revenue of $41.2 million. For the full fiscal year, revenue is pegged at $126.3 million and earnings per share are forecast to come in at $0.37.

At its current price, the stock traded at around 59 times expected 2020 earnings, 36 times expected 2021 earnings and 25 times expected 2022 earnings.