2-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Geron? (GERN)

2-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Geron?

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, biopharmaceutical company Geron (Nasdaq: GERN ) has received a distressing two-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Geron's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Geron facts

Headquarters (founded)	Menlo Park, Calif. (1990)
Market Cap	$345.2 million
Industry	Biotechnology
Trailing-12-Month Revenue	$1.9 million
Management	CEO Dr. John Scarlett (since September 2011) CFO Graham Cooper (since January 2012)
Return on Equity (average, past 3 years)	(55.1%)
Cash/Debt	$118.2 million / $0
Competitors	GlaxoSmithKline StemCells Xenoport

Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 8% of the 663 All-Stars who have rated Geron believe the stock will underperform the S&P 500 going forward.

Just yesterday, one of those bears, TSIF, touched on the stock's seemingly unsustainable valuation:

Geron Corp has doubled from it's June lows. ... A less toxic chemo drug delivery system seems promising, but also seems difficult to correlate and time consuming to study. ... Cash burn rate and cash position seem relatively strong although many biopharms sell into strength anyway. This might have made a good speculative up-play at $1.30 as insiders did. Overall, I'm not supporting the market cap at this stage.

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Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

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