Analyst Targets
- Piper Sandler: Overweight, $100 price target (initiated November 11, 2026)
- BTIG Research: Buy, $92 price target
- H.C. Wainwright: Buy, $90 price target
- Craig Hallum: Buy, $64 price target
- Consensus: Moderate Buy
The Setup in One Number
Piper Sandler initiated coverage of CareDx this morning with an Overweight rating and a $100 price target, implying roughly 24% upside from the prior close. That is not the story. The story is what the firm is walking into: a company that has now raised its full-year revenue guidance three times in 2026 and is guiding to $520–$530 million, against a business that did $380 million in all of 2025.
That gap did not come from a single product pop. It came from a structural shift in how transplant medicine monitors patients.
Company Profile
CareDx is a precision diagnostics company centered on post-transplant monitoring. Its core commercial products, AlloSure Kidney, AlloMap Heart, AlloSure Heart, and AlloSure Lung, use donor-derived cell-free DNA and gene expression profiling to detect organ rejection without an invasive biopsy. As of July 1, 2026, it also owns NavDx, a blood-based test used in HPV-driven cancer surveillance, acquired through its $160 million Naveris deal (with up to $100 million in contingent consideration). The combined addressable market is estimated above $12 billion across transplant, oncology, and cell therapy.
The Numbers
Third-quarter 2026 results, reported October 29, cleared every material bar:
- Total revenue: $139 million, up 39% year over year
- Testing Services revenue: $119 million, up 65% year over year
- Testing volume: approximately 75,900 tests, up 51% year over year
- Transplant volume alone: 50,750 tests, up 21% year over year
- Specialty Oncology revenue: about $12 million, 37% comparable growth
- Adjusted EBITDA: $30 million, versus $15 million in Q3 2025
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.70, against a consensus around $0.25
Full-year 2026 guidance now sits at $520–$530 million in revenue and $90–$100 million in adjusted EBITDA. The EBITDA midpoint is nearly double where the company was guiding after the first quarter.
Why the Stock Has Run
The 328% year-to-date price appreciation in CDNA is not speculative froth on a clinical-stage asset. It reflects three converging forces: accelerating transplant test volumes across all three major organ categories, a reimbursement environment that has finally resolved years of Medicare LCD uncertainty in the company’s favor, and the Naveris acquisition layering in a second high-growth revenue stream before the core business plateaus.
Kidney testing is running above 20% volume growth. Heart testing is expanding in the mid-teens. Lung testing is the strongest of the three. That breadth matters because it removes single-organ concentration risk from the bull thesis.
Macro and Industry Context
The underlying tailwind is behavioral change at the transplant center level. Molecular surveillance testing is shifting from an optional add-on to an embedded protocol, driven by clinical evidence showing that dd-cfDNA can surface rejection signals earlier than standard of care pathways. Epic Aura workflow integration is lowering the friction cost of ordering. That structural adoption curve has further to run: for-cause testing now accounts for half of all kidney test volume, a category that barely existed two years ago.
Forward Scenarios
Bull
Transplant volumes sustain 20%-plus growth through 2027, NavDx reimbursement per test climbs toward the roughly $1,000 level management has discussed, AlloHeme and HistoMap Kidney reach commercial readiness, and Q4 volume guidance of 76,000–80,000 tests is met or exceeded. BTIG’s $92 target and Piper’s $100 target both prove conservative.
Base
Volume growth moderates to the mid-teens as the easiest transplant center conversions are complete. NavDx contributes meaningful incremental revenue at the 30%–40% growth pace management has discussed. EBITDA margin continues expanding. The stock consolidates near current levels while the 2027 pipeline de-risks.
Bear
Reimbursement variability returns. Prior-period revenue collections, which inflated testing services revenue in Q3, do not recur at the same rate. Pipeline assets, AlloHeme and HistoMap, face delays. The stock retreats toward a key moving-average support zone.
Technical Overlay
CDNA closed Tuesday, November 10, 2026 at $80.77. The stock is extended on a trailing basis, and the recent pullback is the first meaningful compression since the Q3 earnings gap higher. A prior breakout area in the mid-$60s is the first material support zone.
What to Watch
- Q4 total test volume: guidance of 76,000–80,000 tests
- Q4 transplant volume: guidance of 61,000–63,000 tests implies 17% year-over-year growth at the midpoint
- NavDx revenue per test trajectory toward management’s longer-term targets
- AlloHeme pivotal data and 2027 commercial timeline
- Epic Aura integration progress against year-end targets
- Whether analyst revisions follow today’s Piper initiation higher
Bottom Line
CareDx is no longer a transplant testing company waiting for its moment. It is an operating business with accelerating volumes, expanding margins, a second growth engine in specialty oncology, and a 2027 pipeline that includes cell therapy and advanced kidney diagnostics. The question at $81 is whether the market is paying for 2026 execution or for 2027 optionality. At a high trailing revenue multiple, it is clearly the latter. That makes the AlloHeme readout and NavDx reimbursement path the two variables that actually determine the next 30 points in either direction.
