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Nektar Therapeutics NKTR

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The bet you're really making is that Nektar's one drug that matters, rezpegaldesleukin (rezpeg), actually clears up moderate-to-severe eczema in two big Phase 3 trials the way it did in a smaller trial this year. You're betting it can do something Sanofi and Regeneron's Dupixent cannot: calm the immune system so the skin stays clear even after patients stop the shots. Right now it looks hopeful but unproven: the mid-stage trial worked, the two make-or-break trials just started, and the old licensing money that pays the bills fell from $98 million to $55 million last year and is now about $10 million a quarter. You pay about $1.5 billion more than the cash Nektar is sitting on for that one drug, roughly 2.7 times what the company is worth on paper, below last year's peak but far above the giveaway prices of 2022 and 2023 when investors had written it off.

Key data

Price$74.19
52-week range$33.40 – $109
P/E, trailing / FY2028En/m (net loss)
Price / book2.7x

NKTR · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$0$25$49$74$98 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jul '25Feb '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Nektar is now, in practice, a one-drug company. That drug is rezpegaldesleukin, or rezpeg, an engineered interleukin-2 molecule built to expand regulatory T cells, the cells that act as the immune system's brakes. Turn the brakes up and inflammation from an overactive immune response is meant to fade. The lead target is moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis, the chronic eczema that Sanofi and Regeneron's Dupixent turned into a multibillion-dollar market. In March 2026 the Phase 2b REZOLVE-AD trial read out positive and the stock tripled off its $33.40 low. In July 2026 Nektar started the two registrational Phase 3 trials, ZENITH AD-1 and ZENITH AD-2, in patients twelve and older. The mechanism is well described, but no primary-literature citation (a DOI, PubMed id, or trial NCT number) could be pulled this run, so the science here rests on the company's 10-Q, not on a paper I read. Everything else, the old oncology programs and the bempeg wreckage, is history. What is left besides rezpeg is a shrinking stream of legacy royalties. The moat, if the durability data hold, is the conjugate chemistry and the claim that patients stay clear after they stop dosing, which Dupixent cannot say.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05Closing thoughts
  6. 06Methodology

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