Roth Capital Partners initiated coverage of Bionano Genomics (NASDAQ:BNGO) with a “buy” rating and $12 price target. The stock closed at $6.31 on Sept. 24.
Bionano is a life sciences instrumentation company that offers the Saphyr platform for ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific detection of large genetic structural variations.
Analyst Dr. David Solomon writes that the impetus for his “buy rating is our belief that Saphyr is a differentiated tool that generates novel and valuable information, making it well-positioned to penetrate the large and rapidly-growing discovery research and cytogenetics industries.”
He said Saphyr images large labeled chromosome segments in an automated, high-throughput and relatively inexpensive manner. “It touts sensitivity levels greater than 95% and about 2% false positive rates for large structural variation detection,” he added.
In addition, Saphyr can construct physical genome maps without using a reference. “We believe that these features are novel and appear valuable for both discovery researchers and cytogenic labs,” Dr. Solomon said.
