Shares in Amylyx Pharmaceuticals (AMLX 3.35%) were up almost 28% in the week to Friday morning. The move comes after an analyst at Guggenheim initiated coverage of the small-cap stock and issued a buy recommendation, accompanied by a price target of $17. For reference, the stock price at the time of writing is $6.50.

Why Wall Street is excited by Amylyx Pharmaceuticals

The main excitement surrounds avexitide, a GLP-1 receptor antagonist, which Amylyx is currently testing in a phase 3 trial for post-bariatric hypoglycemia (PBH). According to Amylyx, about 8% of patients who have undergone bariatric (weight loss) surgery end up with PBH; this translates to 160,000 people living with PBH now. The Guggenheim analyst believes avexitide has blockbuster potential (usually implying sales of over $1 billion), and investors are hoping Amylyx can replicate the results of its phase 2 trial.

Management anticipates that the phase 3 Lucidity trial will be completed in 2025, with headline results expected to be available in the first half of 2026.

What it means to investors

For reference, the two phase 2 trials tested 18 and 16 people with PBH, with the phase 2b trial cutting hypoglycemia events by more than 50%.

Image source: Getty Images.

While the phase 2 results are impressive, investors should always remember that phase 2 trials are not always replicated in phase 3 trials, and the 18- and 16-person sample size in the phase 2 trials is a lot smaller than the 75 set to take part in Lucidity.

That said, there's clearly upside potential here, and Amylyx might attract speculative investors with a tolerance for risk.