Ocular Therapeutix price target raised to $15 from $10 at Piper Sandler

Piper Sandler raised the firm’s price target on Ocular Therapeutix to $15 from $10 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. Last week, Ocular announced a $325M private placement financing and the addition of significant retinal expertise across its executive team. Most notably, additions to the team bring broad experience in retinal drug development that have resulted in successful registrational trials, regulatory approvals and strategic exits, the firm notes. The additional capital also clearly positions Axpaxli for full execution of late-stage clinical development across the retinal disease landscape, now likely to include NPDR. Given what Piper sees as high likelihood of initial clinical proof-of-concept in NPDR in 2Q24, and what it sees as a vote of confidence to the program from the new additions, the firm is layering in NPDR as a future opportunity for Axpaxli.