3 Humongous Health-Care Stocks This Week

Tax day came and went. Some fortunate investors in health-care stocks, though, are already potentially adding to their 2014 tax bills after racking up big gains over the past few days. Here are the week’s three most humongous health-care stocks.

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Shares of the biopharmaceutical firm soared 55% this week.

Akebia Therapeutics (Nasdaq:AKBA)

Source: Yahoo! Finance

• 3 analysts gave positive ratings to the stock• Morgan Stanley reiterated an “overweight”

rating with a $90 price target• Nomuria Securities recommended Akebia

as a “buy” with a $39 price target• UBS AG announced a “buy” rating with a

$28 price target• Each of these firms were involved with

Akebia’s IPO earlier this year

Why Akebia shares skyrocketed

Shares of the online health information provider climbed 19% higher for the week.

WebMD (Nasdaq:WBMD)

Source: Yahoo! Finance

• WebMD gave a positive Q1 update in advance of the April 30 earnings release

• Revenue expected to be at the high end of the range previously given for Q1 and in top half of range given for full-year 2014

• Earnings for Q1 projected to be above previous estimates with full-year earnings also in top half of range provided earlier

• Traffic in Q1 up 32% year-over-year in terms of unique users and up 26% for page views

Why WebMD won big

Shares of the life sciences company jumped 16% this week.

Repligen (Nasdaq:RGEN)

Source: Yahoo! Finance

• Repligen joined the S&P SmallCap 600 Index

• Replaced Hi-Tech Pharmacal, which is being acquired by drugmaker Akorn (Nasdaq:AKRX)

• Repligen disappointed investors last quarter but expects solid revenue growth in 2014 of 10-15%

Why Repligen roared

• WebMD claims an enviable status as the leading online source of health information and should continue to do well

• Repligen also has a decent chance of solid gains in 2014, but my pick for most likely to stay humongous is Akebia Therapeutics

• It’s certainly a speculative choice, but Akebia’s chronic kidney disease and anemia drug AKB-6548 could prove to be a big winner for the small biopharmaceutical company

• Morgan Stanley’s price target of $90 is probably too pie-in-the-sky, but good news from a phase 2b study later this year could turbocharge shares

Best pick to stay humongous?

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Find out which stock The Motley Fool’s chief investment officer selected as the top pick for

2014 in our free report!