Guardant Health (GH 1.62%) has experienced some big swings both up and down with its share price in recent months. However, there's a more important thing to focus on with this stock than its volatility. In this Motley Fool Live video recorded on March 17, 2021, Motley Fool contributors Keith Speights and Brian Orelli answer a viewer's question about Guardant Health and discuss why the stock could be a big winner over the long term.
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Keith Speights: The top question on Sli.do is, "Thoughts on Guardant Health?" Ticker there is GH. Brian, do you have any thoughts on Guardant Health?
Brian Orelli: Yeah, it's not a company I follow that closely. Do you have any thoughts?
Speights: Yeah. I'm actually a shareholder, and so the stock hasn't performed all that well this year. I haven't looked to see what its percentage gain or decline is so far year to date. Guardant Health is a long-term play in my view. I mean, I wouldn't worry about some of the short-term volatility.
The company, they are pioneering liquid biopsy and they have, I think, three products on the market right now. Their flagship product is Guardant360. It's a companion diagnostic. But they're developing other products.
I think the real thing to concentrate on with Guardant Health is the prospects of what the company could do in the future. The potential market for liquid biopsies is massive, absolutely massive for early cancer detection, for cancer recurrence monitoring.
There are other companies in this space, Guardant Health certainly doesn't have the market to itself. But I think the potential is really big. I think over the long run, the stock's going to be a winner. But over the short term, you're going to have to put up with some up and down swings that may not be all that fun.
Orelli: They're developing a diagnostic to detect cancer, right? As well as right now their main product is using, as you said, a companion diagnostic, so they are using it. You test the cancer and then that allows you to figure out what drugs are most likely to respond to. But I believe they're also testing a diagnostic that would detect cancer earlier than you might expect just based on going to your doctor and saying, "These are my symptoms."
Speights: That's exactly right. They focus right now more on therapy selection but they just rolled out a new product, I mean, just recently, for recurrence monitoring. Like you said, they're developing other products that would be used for very early-stage cancer detection. That's where the real market opportunity is for Guardant Health or the biggest market opportunity anyway.
Orelli: I mean, because you're basically looking at the market is, basically all adults in the United States versus the cancer test is actually just people, only people who have cancer.
Speights: Exactly.
