Vericel Corp. (VCEL)

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Did The Underlying Business Drive Vericel's (NASDAQ:VCEL) Lovely 767% Share Price Gain?
We think that it's fair to say that the possibility of finding fantastic multi-year winners is what motivates many investors. You won't get it right every time, but when you do, the returns can be truly splendid. One bright shining star stock has been Vericel Corporation (NASDAQ:VCEL), which is 767% higher than three years ago. Unfortunately, though, the stock has dropped 5.8% over a week. But this could be related to the soft market, with stocks selling off around 0.9% in the last week.
It really delights us to see such great share price performance for investors.
Check out our latest analysis for Vericel
Vericel isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.
In the last 3 years Vericel saw its revenue grow at 22% per year. That's much better than most loss-making companies. And it's not just the revenue that is taking off. The share price is up 105% per year in that time. It's always tempting to take profits after a share price gain like that, but high-growth companies like Vericel can sometimes sustain strong growth for many years. In fact, it might be time to put it on your watchlist, if you're not already familiar with the stock.
You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
We like that insiders have been buying shares in the last twelve months. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Vericel will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).
A Different Perspective
It's nice to see that Vericel shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 78% over the last year. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 41%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. If you want to research this stock further, the data on insider buying is an obvious place to start. You can click here to see who has been buying shares - and the price they paid.