Needham Sees Buying Opportunity in This Penny Stock

Analysts are overwhelmingly bullish on the name

Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) stock is red-hot today, after Needham upgraded the cancer specialist to "buy" from "hold, and assigned a $3 price target -- a 63% premium to last night's close. The brokerage firm said the "negative optics of a big pharma passing on imetelstat" creates a buying opportunity for the penny stock. This comes after Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) subsidiary Janssen terminated its imetelstat collaboration with Geron last September.

In reaction, GERN stock is up 3.2% at $1.90, pacing toward its sixth straight win. Since bottoming below the $1 level in late December, the shares have more than doubled, but have struggled against the $2 mark -- near a massive Sept. 27 bear gap.

Analysts are optimistic, with all three in coverage maintaining a "buy" or better rating on GERN. Plus, the average 12-month price target sits all the way up at $3.63.

Short sellers, on the other hand, have heavily targeted GERN. The 41.09 million shares currently sold short represents 22% of the stock's available float, or 10.1 times the average daily pace of trading.