Healthcare stocks have had a weird run over the last couple of years. The sector was hot near the beginning of the pandemic only to turn ice cold at the end of 2021.
Seasoned healthcare investors know that their favorite businesses continue growing steadily even when their stock prices take a turn for the worse. Here are three healthcare stocks that Wall Street analysts expect to put up gains of 28% or better in the near term.
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Moderna
Moderna (MRNA 3.28%) shares are down by more than 60% from a peak they reached last August. Analysts on Wall Street who follow the stock think it can recover some of those losses. The consensus price target on Moderna suggests a 35% gain could be just up ahead.
Moderna markets the second most successful COVID-19 vaccine and that's all it's going to be able to sell for the foreseeable future. At its peak, though, Moderna's market value exceeded the value of all but a few of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.
A recent agreement with the Japanese government to supply another 70 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine could push revenue past expectations in 2022. Another wave of infections in China and Europe also bodes well for vaccine demand this year. In the U.S., Moderna has asked the FDA to authorize a second booster of its COVID-19 vaccine.
Moderna probably doesn't deserve a $190 billion market cap again until it has more than one product to sell. To this end, the company made significant progress recently. The first participant in a trial evaluating an experimental HIV vaccine recently received their first dose.
Alnylam
Alnylam (ALNY 0.19%) hasn't been attacked as fiercely as many of its biotech peers in recent months. The stock is down by around 21% since it peaked last October.
Investment bank analysts following Alnylam think it has a good chance to recover and continue climbing. The consensus price target for Alnylam represents a 28% premium over its price now.
Biotech stocks across the board have been under a lot of pressure that Alnylam has mostly avoided. Rising sales of multiple new drugs have been keeping investors from jumping ship as they should. Product sales in 2021 were 83% higher than they were in 2020.
Looking ahead, Alnylam could see a huge cash injection if a recently filed patent infringement suit against Moderna and Pfizer stands up in court. In short, Alnylam contends that the lipid-based bubbles that encapsulate the mRNA payload in COVID-19 vaccines are too similar to the lipid bubbles Alnylam uses to wrap up its own RNA-based treatments.
Doximity
Doximity (DOCS -0.85%) is another stock that peaked last October. Since peaking, though, it's lost nearly half its value. Shares off this social media company for healthcare professionals are expected to recover, though. The stock's consensus target is 32% above its price at the moment.
This isn't necessarily a telehealth company, it's a social network that curates news feeds for around 350,000 active healthcare providers. One of Doximity's most popular features, though, is a privacy law-compliant application doctors can use to contact patients from their own smartphones.
Expectations for Doximity got ahead of themselves last year for pretty good reasons. Doximity Dialer is effectively a leading telehealth platform because it doesn't matter which telehealth provider a patient's healthcare plan sponsor has chosen or which smartphone applications they can access. With Doximity Dialer, physicians can quickly connect with patients by using their phone numbers.
During the company's fiscal third quarter, ended Dec. 31, the company reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) that more than doubled year over year to $47 million. That worked out to an impressive 48% of total revenue during the quarter.
With strong profit margins and the only social media app built for physicians, Doximity has a good chance to blast right past its consensus price target this year and climb much further over the long run.
