What's in the Cards for Corbus (CRBP) This Earnings Season?

Zacks Equity Research - finance.yahoo.com Posted 5 years ago
image

Shares of Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Inc. CRBP have slumped 9.8% compared with the industry’s decline of 16.1% in the past year.

View photos

 

In the last reported quarter, the company’s incurred loss that was wider than the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Moreover, Corbus has missed earnings estimates in all of the trailing four quarters, the average negative earnings surprise being 54.08%.

Let’s see how things are shaping up prior to the announcement of the upcoming fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 results.

Factors Likely to Impact Q4 Results

Corbus Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage drug development company focused on treating inflammatory and fibrotic diseases through the endocannabinoid system (“ECS”) pathways.

The company’s lead product, lenabasum is a novel synthetic, oral, endocannabinoid drug designed to resolve chronic inflammation and fibrotic processes. The candidate is being developed to treat four life-threatening diseases — systemic sclerosis (SSc), cystic fibrosis (CF), dermatomyositis (DM) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Corbus expects to report top-line results from the phase III RESOLVE-1 study on SSc in 2020. 

Enrollment and dosing are ongoing in a phase IIb study for the treatment of CF and the company expects to report top-line data from the study in 2020. 

In December 2018, the company initiated the phase III DETERMINE study designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of lenabasum for the treatment of DM. We expect more updates on this study in the fourth-quarter conference call. The company recently presented safety and efficacy data from the 12-month open-label extension (OLE) of the phase II study on lenabasum for the treatment of DM at American College of Rheumatology (ACR), demonstrating a favorable safety profile and further improvement in efficacy endpoints.

The company is also enrolling and dosing patients in a phase II study of lenabasum for the treatment of SLE.

In September 2018, the company entered into a license agreement with private company Jenrin Discovery to acquire exclusive global rights to candidates from more than 600 compounds, targeting the endocannabinoid system. The key pre-clinical candidate acquired from this deal is CRB-4001, which is expected to enter clinical stage of development in 2019 for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH. 

Investors’ focus will be on pipeline updates in the fourth quarter.

What Does the Zacks Model Unveil?

Our proven model does not conclusively show a potential earnings beat for Corbus in the to-be-reported quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to be able to beat estimates. But that is not the case here, as you will see below.

Earnings ESP: Corbus has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% as both the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at a loss of 24 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Corbus currently has a Zacks Rank #1, which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive Earnings ESP to be confident of an earnings beat.

Note that Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) going into an earnings announcement are best avoided.

Story continues

Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

View photos

Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise | Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Inc. Quote

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are some stocks you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.

BioDelivery Sciences International Inc. BDSI is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on Mar 14. The company has an Earnings ESP of +38.46% and a Zacks Rank of 1. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Tilray Inc. TLRY is expected to report fourth-quarter results on Mar 18. The company has an Earnings ESP of +7.41% and a Zacks Rank of 3.

Fibrogen Inc. FGEN has an Earnings ESP of +164.71% and a Zacks Rank of 3.

Breakout Biotech Stocks with Triple-Digit Profit Potential

The biotech sector is projected to surge beyond $775 billion by 2024 as scientists develop treatments for thousands of diseases.

They’re also finding ways to edit the human genome to literally erase our vulnerability to these diseases. Zacks has just released Century of Biology: 7 Biotech Stocks to Buy Right Now to help investors profit from 7 stocks poised for outperformance. Our recent biotech recommendations have produced gains of +98%, +119% and +164% in as little as 1 month. The stocks in this report could perform even better.

See these 7 breakthrough stocks now>>


Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
 
BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. (BDSI) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Inc. (CRBP) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
FibroGen, Inc (FGEN) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
Tilray, Inc. (TLRY) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
 
Zacks Investment Research