2 Stocks That Could Double This Year

Every year, a handful of stocks double over the course of the year. 

This was even true last year, despite the market having its worst year since the Great Recession, as stocks like Tandem Diabetes (NASDAQ: TNDM), Turtle Beach (NASDAQ: HEAR), Twilio (NASDAQ: TWLO), and Crocs (NASDAQ: CROX) all delivered triple-digit returns.

For this year, I’ve got my eye on two stocks that I think could double in 2019. Here’s what you need to know about these two stocks.

Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR)

Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR) had a rough 2018, but so far this year things are looking better and the stock is already up 22% year-to-date (YTD).

But the big-data cruncher still has plenty of upside ahead of it this year. Analysts’ average price target for CLDR is $21.31, suggesting possible upside of 56.7% over the next twelve months. Late last year, Needham & Company upgraded the stock to a Strong Buy and boosted their price target to $31 – 128% higher than the current price.

In its last reported quarter—and first since announcing its merger with Hortonworks back in October—Cloudera beat expectations on both revenue and profit, proving that its new strategy of focusing on higher-profit customers was paying off.

Revenue grew 25% with core subscription revenue up a strong 28%. The net expansion rate grew 127% in the quarter, which means that existing customers spent 27% more, on average, in the fiscal year compared to the year prior.

Management was also quick to express their enthusiasm for the merger with Hortonworks. “I’ve done big acquisitions at IBM. I’ve done mergers of equals before in software companies,” said CEO Jim Frankola. “By far, this is going faster and better than anything I’ve ever been associated with.”

Cloudera and Hortonworks completed their merger on January 3, and are moving forward together under the Cloudera banner. Together, they are selling customers on a unified platform that is cloud-neutral, meaning that it works across all major public clouds, on-premises data centers, as well as private clouds. And it seems to be a strategy that’s paying off as the company acquired 63 new customers in the last quarter.

Global Blood Therapeutics (NASDAQ: GBT)

Global Blood Therapeutics (NASDAQ: GBT) is a big player in the blood disorders space, specifically sickle cell anemia. 

It’s primary drug candidate could see some significant catalysts this year as it moves toward gaining approval. The drug, Voxelotor, is being developed as a potentially disease-modifying therapy for sickle cell disease (SCD), and the company announced earlier this week that it intends to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) for the drug later this year under an accelerated approval pathway with the FDA.

“The findings from the Phase 1/2 study and the open-label extension played an important role in our development of voxelotor. We believe voxelotor has the potential to become a standard-of-care therapy in SCD, as evidenced by its ability to reduce anemia, hemolysis and sickling,” said GBT’s president and chief executive officer, Ted W. Love, M.D. “Additionally, I’m pleased that we have reached agreement with the FDA on both the accelerated approval pathway for voxelotor and for transcranial doppler (TCD) flow velocity as an acceptable primary endpoint in a post-approval confirmatory study to demonstrate stroke risk reduction.”

“We plan on initiating our TCD study later this year. I look forward to our upcoming pre-NDA meeting with the FDA for voxelotor, which will primarily focus on the format of our planned NDA filing in the second-half of this year,” Love said.

The drug is being developed as an oral once-daily treatment for patients with SCD, and has shown promising results in trails, with Oppenheimer analyst Mark Breidenbach saying that it could “substantially improve the standard of care in this indication.”

If approved, the drug could be a relatively high-priced drug that targets a patient population size of 100,000 patients in the U.S., a relatively large patient population. Positive updates on the approval front will likely send the stock soaring, and there is plenty to look forward to with this stock, especially in the later half of the year.

The average price target for GBT is $86.39, indicating possible upside of 80.76% over the next twelve months. HC Wainwright recently set its price target for the stock at $150 – 214% higher than the price as of this writing.


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