Piper Sandler has maintained its Overweight recommendation on Natera (NASDAQ:NTRA), keeping a price target of $230.00 that implies about 12% upside from the quoted share price of $206.23. The analyst house also noted a range of analyst price targets extending from $186 to $300, and the company’s market capitalization was cited at $28.53 billion.
The firm singled out Japan as a strategically significant market for Natera’s Signatera molecular residual disease test, arguing that investors may not be fully valuing the opportunity. Piper Sandler said Natera intends to secure regulatory approval for Signatera in Japan in 2026 and to begin commercial sales with reimbursement in 2027. If realized, that expansion could add momentum to revenue growth that has already been robust - Natera reported a 38.17% increase in revenue over the last twelve months.
According to the note, Japan presents several characteristics that favor specialty diagnostics. The market features centralized testing infrastructure and a single-payer system capable of covering a test for the national population, attributes the firm believes are conducive to broad uptake. The analysts also pointed to colorectal cancer case volumes in Japan as being comparable to those in the United States, suggesting a sizable addressable market for Signatera.
Piper Sandler outlined a set of potential expansion vectors for Signatera beyond the Japan rollout, including broader pan-cancer indications, alignment with NCCN guidelines, and ongoing clinical work such as the VEGA trial. These elements were presented as complementary drivers that could support adoption and guideline inclusion over time.
Separately, Natera has advanced multiple programs and regulatory initiatives that the analyst community is watching. The company submitted a premarket approval application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Signatera CDx, a test designed to detect molecular residual disease in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer. That submission rests on results from the phase 3 IMvigor011 clinical trial, which reported significant improvements in disease-free and overall survival for patients who were Signatera-positive and subsequently treated with atezolizumab.
On the transplant front, Natera completed enrollment for the ACES-EMB study evaluating its Prospera Heart test. The trial includes more than 300 patients across 17 U.S. transplant centers and is positioned to assess whether the blood-based test can reduce reliance on invasive biopsies for monitoring heart transplant rejection.
Looking to maternal-fetal medicine, Natera said it will present data from the EXPAND clinical trial at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine meeting in 2026. That presentation will focus on the Fetal Focus screening test and its performance in detecting inherited disease-causing variants.
The company also introduced a new artificial intelligence model intended to enhance risk assessment for cancer recurrence by integrating multiple data inputs into the Signatera MRD platform.
Among other sell-side commentary, Canaccord Genuity retained a Buy rating on Natera after preliminary fourth-quarter results that showed expected revenue growth near 40% year-over-year and a 17% increase in test volume.
These items together create a mosaic of commercial, regulatory, and clinical catalysts that underpin Piper Sandler’s stance. The firm’s reiterated Overweight rating reflects an expectation that the combination of geographic expansion, guideline progress, trial readouts, and product enhancements could sustain above-market growth for the company’s diagnostics franchises.