I may be the only person following Vericel at this point. Long story short, small company with the best product on the market for knee cartilage repair of a certain type. Growing quickly and will soon be profitable. Please see pasts posts for more. There has always been this specter of competition but the company that was closest to having something ready for market just reported relatively disappointing phase 3 results. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3387845-histogenics-45-percent… . By the time anyone else gets to market they are going to have to prove they are better than VCEL’s MACI product instead of the current gold standard which is microfracture. By that time VCEL will have large distribution and sales network as well as deals with all the major insurance companies which all come together for a large moat. All the above is why VCEL is up 23% as I write this. I think they have plenty of room to grow ~10 times with their current products. If they can expand their indication they should be able to grow much more.
-ethan
p.s. VCEL is now large enough for mutual funds to pick up. Institutional ownership has skyrocketed over the year to 76% from the 30% range.