Forget the “Magnificent Seven” — This Stock Has Nearly Quadrupled in 2024, and Wall Street Thinks It Can Go a Lot Higher

You’ve no doubt heard a lot about the “Magnificent Seven” stocks. Each stock in this group — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and Tesla — delivered gains of 48% or more in 2023. Nvidia more than tripled, while Meta came close to doing so.

However, those performances pale in comparison to what one stock has done barely over two weeks into the new year. Forget the Magnificent Seven: Longboard Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LBPH) has nearly quadrupled in 2024 — and Wall Street thinks it can go a lot higher.

Behind Longboard Pharmaceuticals’ massive gain

It’s completely understandable if you’ve never heard of Longboard Pharmaceuticals. At the end of 2023, its market cap was only around $144 million. That’s too small to be on the radar screens for most investors.

However, Longboard began the new year with a bang. On Jan. 2, the company announced positive results from its Pacific phase 1b/2a clinical study evaluating the experimental drug bexicaserin in treating developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs).

Using the word “positive” doesn’t convey just how good Longboard’s update was. The company’s chief medical officer, Randall Kaye, described the Pacific study results for bexicaserin as “exciting.” Tracy Dixon-Salazar, executive director of the LGS Foundation, an organization that supports research and education related to Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), used the adjective “remarkable.”

In Longboard’s clinical study, patients who received bexicaserin experienced a 53.3% median decrease in countable motor seizure frequency compared to a 20.8% decrease for those receiving placebo. Patients with Dravet syndrome, a genetic form of epilepsy, experienced a 72.1% median decline in countable motor seizure frequency. Patients with LGS experienced a median seizure reduction of 48.1%, while patients with other types of DEE experienced a reduction of 61.2%.

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What’s more, bexicaserin’s safety profile looked encouraging. Nearly 86% of patients…