One-glance verdict
$38.37 our estimate vs market $25.03
Wall Street consensus: $31.25 (-18.6% lower than our fair-value estimate)
35% below our estimate, below the bear case
Fundamentals snapshot
XNCR · NGM · Healthcare · Biotechnology
Current price
$25.03
52-week range
$10.04 - $30.61
Market cap
$1.86B
One-glance verdict
Wall Street consensus: $31.25 (-18.6% lower than our fair-value estimate)
35% below our estimate, below the bear case
Balance sheet
Net cash $286.34M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
What this company does
Xencor is a biotechnology company that develops engineered antibodies, which are special proteins designed to help the body fight cancer and diseases where the immune system attacks itself. The company earns money from a couple of approved drugs and from partnerships where larger drug companies pay to use Xencor's technology in their own medicines. This means the company's success depends on both its pipeline (the collection of drugs it is currently developing) and its ability to keep making these valuable partnership deals.
Xencor was founded in 1997 with a focus on improving how antibodies, which are proteins our bodies use to fight disease, can be used as medicines. The company developed a specialized technology platform called XmAb® to engineer or modify these antibodies to make them more effective. A key turning point was the company's initial public offering (IPO) in 2013, which provided the funding to advance its own drug candidates while also partnering with larger pharmaceutical companies. Over the years, Xencor has successfully licensed its XmAb® technology to numerous partners, leading to several approved and marketed drugs. This has established them as a leader in antibody engineering.
Think of Xencor as a high-tech design studio for medicines. They don't manufacture drugs you'd find at a pharmacy, but they create the blueprints for them using their XmAb® technology. This technology allows them to take existing antibodies and give them new abilities, like being able to fight cancer cells more effectively or staying in the body longer so a patient needs fewer doses. They then either develop these super-charged antibodies into their own potential new medicines or they license the technology to other drug companies to use in their own drug development.
This part of the company focuses on creating and testing its own potential medicines for cancer and autoimmune diseases (illnesses where the body's immune system attacks its own tissues). Xencor is currently running clinical trials (studies in people) for several of its own drug candidates. If these trials are successful and a drug is approved, Xencor could sell it themselves or partner with a larger company to market and sell it. This is a long-term and expensive part of their business, but it has the potential for significant financial return if a drug is successful.
This is a major way Xencor currently makes money. They act like a technology provider to other, often larger, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. These partners pay Xencor for the right to use its XmAb® technology to improve their own drug candidates. The payments come in several forms: upfront fees, payments based on achieving specific development goals called milestones (for example, successfully completing a clinical trial), and royalties (a percentage of sales if a drug using their technology gets approved and is sold). This provides a steadier stream of revenue for the company.
The company's current strategy is to increasingly focus on developing its own pipeline of drugs, particularly for cancer and autoimmune diseases. They are investing heavily in their own clinical trials with the goal of bringing their own products to market. Management believes that their engineered antibodies can be superior to existing treatments. At the same time, they continue to leverage their XmAb® platform through new and existing partnerships to generate revenue that helps fund their own drug development efforts.
Price history
Earnings history
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
Is it cheap or expensive?
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $31.25 (-18.6% lower than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $38.37 a share — about 53.3% above today's price of $25.03, so the stock currently looks cheap (undervalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Net cash $286.3M - more cash than debt. Interest coverage -5.6x.
Xencor, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 0.0 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here and 4 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Total debt $170.11M Interest coverage -5.56x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $16.01M Interest coverage -6.93x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
Total debt $277.36M Interest coverage 0.60x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while XNCR does not.
Total debt $135.62M Interest coverage -50.24x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
Total debt $35.09M Interest coverage -8.56x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
What you should know
The numbers
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What you should know