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Piper Sandler Initiates Coverage of Cytek Biosciences With Overweight Rating

NEW YORK – Piper Sandler said on Tuesday that it has initiated coverage of Cytek Biosciences.

The investment bank gave the shares an Overweight rating, with a price target of $28.

We believe Cytek’s Full-Spectrum Profiling (FSP) technology, similar to other discovery-enabling technologies, such as [next-generation sequencing], will generate additional experimentation that will expand the market,” senior research analyst Steven Mah said in a note to investors.

Cytek, which went public on the Nasdaq in July, has developed high-dimensional cell analysis technology called Full Spectrum Profiling.

Used in the company's Aurora, Northern Lights, and Aurora CS platforms, FSP separates distinct cell populations by simultaneously analyzing multiple spectroscopic biomarkers with high signal-to-noise ratio.

The company’s flagship platform, Aurora, uses 64 fluorescence detectors and five lasers to resolve up to 40 colors in combination. The low-cost Northern Lights platform uses up to two lasers to resolve up to 21 colors to sort cells in an easy-to-use format adaptable to clinical use. The recently launched Aurora CS combines FSP with cell sorting capabilities. This device enables multiple downstream R&D uses, including minimal residual disease testing, cell analysis, and disease discovery.

Despite the early stage of high-parameter cell analysis today, we expect the growing use of Cytek's enabling FSP technology as more discoveries are made and more applications are developed and as Cytek invests in new applications, proprietary consumables content, and workflow improvements,” stated Mah.

Cytek plans to improve its workflow, reagents, and software, he wrote, and use of the company’s technology drove a year-on-year growth of approximately 60 percent in 2020, despite the pandemic.

“We believe Cytek is well positioned to remain one of the fastest growing life science tools companies,” Mah added.

In afternoon trading on Tuesday, Cytek shares stood at $22.23.

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