One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$38.00 our estimate vs market $237.57
Wall Street consensus: $311.15 (718.9% higher than our fair-value estimate)
525% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Ascendis Pharma A/S
ASND · NMS · Healthcare · Biotechnology
Current price
$237.57
52-week range
$186.05 - $282.15
Market cap
$15.63B
Balance sheet
Healthy
-1.69x Concerning
Net cash $414.07M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
2 Risks
3 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Revenue grew 98.0% last year.
- Reward Returns 118.8% on equity, ahead of 80% of its peers.
- Risk Forward P/E (21.6x) is higher than trailing (18.5x) - earnings are expected to drop.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 0.8% (peer median: 1.8%).
What this company does
Ascendis Pharma A/S
Ascendis Pharma is a drug company that creates long-lasting treatments for rare hormone-related diseases, with most of its sales coming from its drug SKYTROFA for children with growth problems. The company's future growth depends on selling more of its approved drugs and getting new treatments through its pipeline (the set of products a company is developing for future sale).
How the company got here
Founded in Denmark in 2006, Ascendis Pharma was built around a unique technology called TransCon. This technology is designed to improve existing medicines by making them last longer in the body, reducing how often a patient needs to take them. The company focused on rare diseases where this long-acting approach could make a big difference for patients. After going public in 2015, it successfully developed and gained approval for its first few products, transforming from a research-focused firm into a company that also sells its own medicines globally.
What it actually does
Ascendis Pharma is a biopharmaceutical company that creates new therapies for rare diseases. Its main innovation is the TransCon technology platform, which takes existing, effective drugs and modifies them to be released slowly and steadily in the body over a longer period. This means a patient might only need an injection once a week instead of every day. The company's work is currently focused on hormonal disorders (endocrinology) and is expanding into cancer treatments (oncology).
Endocrinology Rare Diseases
This is the company's primary business, representing the vast majority of its sales. It develops and sells long-acting therapies for rare hormonal conditions. Its main products are SKYTROFA®, a once-weekly treatment for children and adults who don't produce enough growth hormone, and YORVIPATH®, a once-daily therapy for adults with hypoparathyroidism, a condition where the body produces too little parathyroid hormone, affecting calcium levels. Doctors prescribe these medicines, and patients or their caregivers typically administer the injections at home.
Oncology
This is a newer and still developing part of the company that does not yet generate sales. Ascendis is using its TransCon technology to create cancer treatments that could be more effective and have fewer side effects. The goal is to deliver powerful cancer-fighting agents directly to the tumor or to stimulate the body's own immune system to fight the cancer over a sustained period. These potential treatments are currently in clinical trials (the process of testing new drugs in people) to determine if they are safe and effective.
What management is betting on now
Management's strategy, called 'Vision 2030', is focused on making its main endocrinology drugs hugely successful, aiming for each to become a 'blockbuster' (a term for a drug with over $1 billion in annual sales). They are working to get these drugs approved for more types of patients and in more countries around the world. The company is also heavily investing in its oncology pipeline (the set of experimental drugs in development), hoping to bring its first cancer therapies to market. A key part of the strategy is leveraging their TransCon technology to continue creating new, improved versions of existing medicines for other diseases.
Price history
How the share price has moved
—
Loading price history…
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $38.00 vs current price $237.57
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $311.15 (718.9% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $38.00 a share — about 84.0% below today's price of $237.57, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Healthy
Net cash $414.1M - more cash than debt. Interest coverage -1.7x.
Net debt
$-414.07M
Interest coverage
-1.69x
Ascendis Pharma A/S's profit covers its interest bill about 0.0 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here and 1 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Healthy
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
ASND
BASELINE
Ascendis Pharma A/S
Total debt $514.55M Interest coverage -1.69x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $4.20B Interest coverage 37.57x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while ASND does not.
Total debt $4.41B Interest coverage 2.65x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while ASND does not.
Total debt $3.37B Interest coverage -2.82x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
Total debt $165.93M Interest coverage 12.90x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while ASND does not.
Total debt $2.99B Interest coverage 1.99x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while ASND does not.
What you should know
The case for and against ASND
3 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Revenue grew 98.0% last year.
-
Returns 118.8% on equity, ahead of 80% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 1/10 years.
Risks
-
Forward P/E (21.6x) is higher than trailing (18.5x) - earnings are expected to drop.
-
Insider ownership is only 0.8% (peer median: 1.8%).
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
18.49x
Forward P/E
21.55x
P/B
9.47x
P/S
14.93x
EV/EBITDA
57.85x
PEG ratio
—
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
91.3%
Operating margin
65.0%
Net margin
70.8%
ROE
118.8%
ROA
9.6%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.31x
Current ratio
2.99x
Quick ratio
2.23x
Total debt
$514.55M
Total cash
$928.62M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$1.20B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
141.4%
EPS TTM
12.85
EPS 5Y CAGR
—
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$61.62M
Free CF TTM
$51.92M
FCF margin
4.3%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
—
Payout ratio
0.0%
Last ex-div date
—