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GE Healthcare has been an under-the-radar winner — and a new catalyst just arrived
GE Healthcare ‘s quiet outperformance is becoming harder to tune out — and its new drug used in radiology to improve the diagnosis of heart disease can help the Club stock make some more noise. In a note to clients Sunday, Wells Fargo analysts said that GE Healthcare’s diagnostic agent Flyrcado is “possibly the most underappreciated asset” owned by large medical technology companies. Flyrcado — approved by the Food and Drug Administration late Friday for the detection of coronary artery disease — is set to launch in some U.S. markets in early 2025, before availability expands. Wells Fargo said Flyrcado has peak annual sales potential of at least $1 billion and could boost earnings per share by roughly 80 cents by 2028. Wall Street currently sees GE Healthcare earning $6.72 per share in 2028, according to FactSet, up from $4.25 projected this year. “That’s incredible,” Jim Cramer said Monday about Wells Fargo’s optimism on Flyrcado. GE Healthcare has been a stock we’ve been battling since its steep slide during the second quarter. The FDA approval and impending launch of Flyrcado brightens the outlook for GE Healthcare’s diagnostic business, a part of our investment thesis that lately has not been top of mind for investors. Instead, the market has seemingly been focused on GE Healthcare’s ability to benefit from Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, which lower borrowing costs and make it easier for hospitals and other medical facilities to finance purchases of its expensive MRI and CT machines. That dynamic — coupled with the positive China stimulus announcements in recent days — turned GE Healthcare into one of our top-performing stocks in the third quarter . Shares were up another 1%-plus on Monday, pushing gains in the July-to-September period to more than 19%, compared with roughly 5% advances for both the S & P 500 health-care sector and the broad market index overall . After touching a new all-time high Friday, we trimmed our position in GE Healthcare , locking in hard-fought profits on a stock prone to periods of underperformance. Still, the fundamentals of the business look increasingly attractive, and Friday’s small sale in a run of overbought market days, according to the S & P Short Range Oscillator , was not a statement about our conviction. “I had not thought — and I should have — that the equipment here is so expensive that you need to finance it. So, once rates went down then you could get a payback,” Jim acknowledged Monday. “On top of that, now we’re getting the reasons that I felt it was important: the diagnostics.” At the time of our initiation in May 2023 , the most exciting diagnostic appeared to be Vizamyl, which is used in the detection of Alzheimer’s disease. Vizamyl’s momentum in recent quarters should continue as the nascent class of Alzheimer’s treatments — Biogen and Eisai’s Leqembi and Club holding Eli Lilly ‘s Kisunla — see more uptake. It’s clear Flyrcado also deserves attention. Flyrcado is what’s known as a radiotracer. It is given to patients via intravenous injection before they undergo a positron emission tomography, known simply as a PET scan. Flyrcado shows how blood flows through the heart muscle for patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease, the most common type of heart disease in the U.S., according to the CDC . The primary imaging technique currently used to diagnosis coronary artery disease is single-photon emission computed tomography, commonly abbreviated as SPECT. Both SPECT and PET scans are part of the nuclear medicine field, but they use different kinds of radiotracers to aid in the diagnosis process. A PET scan using Flyrcado has better diagnostic efficacy than SPECT scans, according to GE Healthcare. That makes Flyrcado a better option for “difficult-to-image patients such as those with a high body mass index (BMI) and women,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote. Due to its half-life of 109 minutes, Flyrcado also can be produced at an offsite pharmacy then delivered to hospitals and imaging centers. That is among its advantages over the existing radiotracers used in scans to detect heart disease, according to the company. “Because of these advantages, we expect Flyrcado to cannibalize current PET tracers over time,” Wells Fargo said. Analysts at Stifel are upbeat on Flyrcado’s potential, too. The radiotracer’s approval is a “clear incremental positive catalyst for GEHC, and with no [Flyrcado] contribution in consensus numbers today, it seems likely to be a growth-enhancing incremental positive for the GEHC 2025 outlook,” analysts wrote to clients Sunday. Stifel raised its price target GEHC to $102 per share from $100. Looking ahead to next year, a proposed change to the way Medicare pays for diagnostic agents such as Flyrcado could take effect, boosting its diagnostics business overall. GE Healthcare may also see a recovery in its China business due to the roll out of medical-focused stimulus spending . Management is expected to talk more about both these additional drivers at its investor day set for Nov. 21. Having just trimmed our GEHC position, we have a 2 rating on the stock, which means we’re waiting for a pullback before considering buying more. We’re reviewing our $92 price target since shares are now trading above that level. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long GEHC. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. 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GE Healthcare booth is seen ahead of the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) at China National Convention Center on August 28, 2022 in Beijing, China.
Yi Haifei | China News Service | Getty Images
GE Healthcare‘s quiet outperformance is becoming harder to tune out — and its new drug used in radiology to improve the diagnosis of heart disease can help the Club stock make some more noise.
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