NEW YORK – JP Morgan and Cowen have both initiated coverage on Sophia Genetics, a genomic data analysis company that went public on the Nasdaq last month. Both investment banks served as bookrunning managers for Sophia's July 23 initial public offering, in which the firm raised $234 million in gross proceeds.
JP Morgan said Monday that it has started covering Sophia with an Overweight rating and a 2022 price target of $22 per share. Sophia, which has co-headquarters in Saint-Sulpice, Switzerland, and Boston, went public at $18 per share and closed Monday at $18.09. It trades on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol SOPH.
"As a first mover with leading scale and accuracy, as well as multiple future expansion opportunities, SOPH is positioned to drive durable high-revenue growth, and the [software-as-a-service] model confers significant operating leverage over time. While competition remains a risk, we believe current valuation still leaves meaningful upside," JP Morgan analysts wrote in a research note to investors.
Cowen, which initiated coverage Tuesday, rated Sophia as Outperform but did not set a price target. The Wall Street firm is also bullish on Sophia's prospects.
"Via its unique DDM platform, the company has emerged as an early leader with a global network of customers," Cowen analysts said of Sophia in a research note.
DDM, which stands for Data Driven Medicine, is Sophia's core genomic analytics platform, supporting all of its analytics pipelines. The vendor also builds components including artificial intelligence technology for predicting variant pathogenicity.