Plant-based biotech provider Jaguar Health has just one licensed drug, Crofelemer, which treats diarrhea in patients with HIV/AIDS. Jaguar Health originally was a veterinary biotech company but tried to broaden its focus due to insufficient revenue in this segment.

Focusing on developing drugs which occur naturally in plants, and marketing them to both the human medical and veterinary markets, the potential benefits of this technology are considerable. Jaguar executives point out that by avoiding costly drug syntheses, plant-based treatments could offer a cheap and plentiful supply of important medications. As of yet, Jaguar Health has not produced a significant number of viable drug candidates.

Jaguar Health is a microcap stock, which are listings for smaller companies at low prices, subject to lesser regulatory requirements. Jaguar Health has performed reverse stock splits, where several of their shares are replaced with a single, higher valued share. This is often a move to stave off delisting from an exchange due to persistently low prices. Like some other struggling companies, Jaguar Health started to see rapid upward price movement in January 2021, fuelled by recommendations on social media and the announcement of new drug trials for a medication for dogs.

Jaguar Health’s IPO took place in 2014 while still trading as Jaguar Animal Health and still focused on the veterinary market. Raising $20 million at $7 per share, the micro-cap IPO valued the company at about $40 million. Factoring in reverse stock splits, Jaguar Health’s price has collapsed to a fraction of a percentage of its launch price, and the company has sustained significant losses for years. Analysts consider the risk of bankruptcy to be high. Despite this, the shares do have major institutional owners, with Baillie Gifford and Vanguard, as well as the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.