The market may have dropped lower today, but that hasn't stopped the Opthea Ltd (ASX: OPT) share price from racing higher.
In morning trade the shares of the developer of novel biologic therapies for the treatment of eye diseases are up over 9% to $3.64.
This gain means that Opthea's shares have now rocketed over 500% higher since the start of the year.
Why is the Opthea share price ending the week on a high?
Investors have been buying Opthea's shares on Friday after it was the subject of a bullish broker note.
According to a note out of Goldman Sachs, its analysts have reiterated their (conviction) buy rating and lifted their price target to $5.20.
Last week Opthea presented new sub-group analysis of its recently announced Phase IIB results of OPT-302 at an ophthalmology conference in the United States. In addition to this, Goldman met with its CEO, Megan Baldwin, on Thursday.
Following these events, the broker now sees a clearer path to a favourable Phase III outcome and ultimately a greater chance of approval for OPT-302.
OPT-302 is a combination therapy for treatment-naïve patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Goldman said: "The strength of benefit demonstrated in the 'occult' sub-population (40-45% of patients) was highly significant and substantially ahead of our expectations. This is the group in which existing treatments have relatively less success and hence, arguably, have greater need for an effective therapy."
"Above all, this result gives us greater confidence that OPT-302 will reach commercial stage. We tweak up the probability of approval from 50% to 55% (though still in line with accepted industry averages in this indication, at this stage)."
If it is approved, it has the potential to generate significant sales revenue for Opthea. The current standard of care treatments for wet AMD had sales of US$3.7 billion in 2018. And the current standard of care of another target, Diabetic Macular Edema (DME), generated sales of US$6.2 billion in 2018.
Should you invest?
There is still a long road ahead for OPT-302, which means Opthea remains a high risk option.
However, if you have a high tolerance for risk, it could be worth making a small investment in its shares.
