NEW YORK – Investment bank Canaccord Genuity initiated coverage of SomaLogic on Tuesday with a rating of Buy and a price target of $19 per share.
SomaLogic listed on the Nasdaq in September after completing a business combination with special purpose acquisition company CM Life Sciences II that raised $630 million in gross proceeds.
In a research note, Canaccord analyst Kyle Mikson said his rating was based on SomaLogic's potential to penetrate a $90 billion addressable market that includes discovery proteomics and translational and biopharma research, as well as clinical diagnostics.
Mikson added that the company's 7,000-protein SomaScan assay offers the largest protein menu currently commercially available, with low limits of detection and high reproducibility. He said that while the company currently generates essentially all of its revenue from the research market, he believes it "is nicely positioned to execute on its clinical diagnostics strategy."
The SomaScan platform uses the company's aptamer-based affinity reagents, called Somamers, to measure proteins in patient samples, typically blood. SomaLogic believes that the ability to analyze large numbers of proteins across large numbers of samples will provide it with the data it needs to identify correlations between protein levels and patient health that it can package as clinical tests.
In Tuesday morning trading on Nasdaq, SomaLogic shares were down less than 1 percent to $11.92.