Three Stocks That Should See Big Turnarounds in 2025

One of the biggest gainers in my portfolio in 2024 was a small-cap concern called Byrna Technologies Inc. BYRN, which nearly quintupled during the year. 

This manufacturer of non-lethal weapons and ammunition saw a huge surge in revenue that swung the company into profitability in the year just closed. Today, I will highlight some other names that hopefully will see a change of fortune in 2025. 

One of these, FreightCar America RAIL I profiled in my column on Sunday.

Let’s start with pet toy and food retailer Bark, Inc. BARK. This concern sells its products through its direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel, as well as through 40,000 brick-and-mortar retail locations such as Walmart WMT and Petco WOOF. The company’s products are all Bark branded — the retailer doesn’t sell third-party merchandise on its websites. Bark, Inc. is in the process of consolidating its websites to enhance cross-selling, focusing on e-commerce sales, and shifting to top-funnel marketing to boost brand awareness.

Bark has been unprofitable since going public late in 2020. However, Bark is making progress on that front. The company should produce a positive adjusted EBITDA for the current fiscal year which began on April 1, 2024. The retailer should be breakeven in the following fiscal year. The company is buying back stock and has also seen some recent insider buying and the story is growing more positive. The shares had a nice rally in the last few months of 2024 to end the year on a high note. That said, the equity still trades way below the levels it came public at four years ago.

The stock of Viking Therapeutics VKTX has fallen some 40% from its most recent high late in October. Viking’s lead asset VK2735, a dual GLP-1/GIP agonist has potential competitive advantages over single-mechanism therapeutics in the weight loss space. The candidate produced quite encouraging Phase 2 results early in 2024 and should begin a Phase 3 study early this year.

An oral version of VK2735 is in earlier stage development and potentially could be a game changer versus the injectable GLP-1 drugs on the market such as blockbusters Wegovy and Zepbound. Another candidate VK2809 hit its primary endpoints in a Phase 2b study in November. It is targeting the huge and growing NASH market, which is now largely referred to as "MASH."  

The shares have ebbed and flowed with buyout speculation around the stock throughout 2024. Oppenheimer just listed it as one of the most logical acquisition targets across the industry in 2025. I like the name as a standalone given its pipeline, but with an under $5 billion market cap, it makes a lot of sense as a target for a much larger player wanting to establish itself in the large and fast growing GLP-1 market.

At the time of publication, Jensen was long BARK, BYRN RAIL and VKTX.