Stifel has reiterated its 'buy' rating on Faron Pharmaceuticals Limited (AIM:FARN), the Finnish biotech, maintaining a price target of €2.50 after the company's interims, which showed the company well-funded to push on with value-accretive work in the clinic.
The stock closed at €0.48 on 25 August, implying upside of 418.1% to the target price.
Faron held €32.0 million in cash at the end of June, up from €13.5 million a year earlier, following the completion of a €40.1 million rights issue in April.
Stifel said the funding extends Faron's cash runway to November 2027, which is expected to cover the key year-end readout from the company's BEXERA trial.
The randomised phase IIb portion of BEXERA is expected to begin in the second half of 2026 and enrol approximately 90 treatment-naive patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome across up to 35 sites in the US, Europe and the UK.
The trial will compare two doses of bexmarilimab combined with azacitidine against placebo combined with azacitidine, with complete response as the primary endpoint.
Separately, matured BEXMAB data presented at the European Hematology Association congress showed the median duration of complete response had increased to 16.1 months from around 12 months previously, at a median follow-up of 14.9 months.
The data showed an 85% overall response rate, a 45% complete response rate and complete bone marrow blast clearance in 60% of patients.
A subsequent analysis of the 21-patient frontline cohort showed median overall survival of 8.8 months in a small biallelic TP53-mutated subgroup of 6-7 patients, broadly in line with the 7 to 9 months seen historically in this population.
