Jefferies's top stock recommendation: Buy rating with 27% upside | Indian share up 57% against IPO price in one month

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Jefferies stock recommendations | Indian stock market: Molbio Diagnostics IPO is one of those rare Indian IPOs that have delivered a whopping return to its share allottees. The public issue was available last month at an upper price band of ₹807 per equity share, and the Goa-based company had a bumper debut on Dalal Street on 17 August 2026. Molbio Diagnostics shares debuted on the BSE and the NSE at ₹980, delivering over 21% listing gain to the lucky allottees.
The bull run in the Molbio Diagnostics share price didn't end here. Molbio Diagnostics share price extended its listing gains and touched an all-time high of ₹1,686.80 apiece on the NSE, delivering a multibagger return to those shareholders who remained invested in the newly listed stock. So, the IPO doubled investors' money at a time when the secondary market is completely under the bears' control. However, the stock couldn't sustain at higher levels due to a profit-booking trigger at the all-time high. Molbio Diagnostics share price today closed at ₹1,272 per share on the NSE, up over 57% against the IPO price of ₹807.
The global brokerage, whose Indian chapter — Jefferies India Private Limited — was one of the lead managers for the Molbio Diagnostics IPO, has initiated coverage, giving a ‘buy’ rating to the newly listed stock. The brokerage believes Molbio Diagnostics is an innovation-led med-tech company that has successfully commercialised a differentiated Point-of-Care molecular diagnostics platform. With two emerging platforms and a robust product pipeline, we believe Molbio is well-positioned for strong growth ahead.
Pointing towards the ‘X’ factor for the newly listed stock, Jefferies report says, “Built after 13 years of R&D, Truenat is an ultra-portable, battery-operated molecular diagnostics (MDx) platform that brings high-quality testing to the point of care. The platform supports testing for 30 diseases, is patent-protected in 100+ countries, and operates in an oligopolistic market. Compared with platforms such as GeneXpert, Truenat is lighter, faster, and less infrastructure-dependent. With revenue of ~USD130m versus GeneXpert's ~USD3bn scale, we believe Truenat is a transformative innovation with significant growth runway.”
The global brokerage said that TrueNat is only the first of several opportunities for Molbio. The company has already expanded beyond MDx with Prorad, a portable X-ray portfolio, and Optrascan, a digital pathology platform. With multiple other products under development, we believe Molbio's innovation pipeline extends well beyond the flagship product - Truenat.
Pointing towards the growth theme of the company, Jefferies expects Molbio to deliver 22% revenue CAGR, driven by continued Truenat expansion in India and overseas, rapid scale-up of Prorad’s portable X-ray portfolio, and the commercial rollout of Optrascan in US.
“We estomate a sharp ~830bps margin expansion for Molbio, driven by: 1) Test-kit capacity utilization rising from 58% in FY26 to 77% by FY29E, 2) Optrascan scaling to 11% of sales by FY29E with 35%+ EBITDA margins versus current losses, and 3) Employee costs declining from 10% to 8% of sales and other opex from ~22% to ~18%. Consequently, we forecast EBITDA/PAT CAGR of 36%/47%,” the brokerage said.
Giving a ‘buy’ tag to the newly listed stock, Jefferies report concluded, “We initiate coverage on Molbio with a Buy rating, as it is among the few Indian innovation-led companies that have already demonstrated the success of its flagship platform with several others in the pipeline to drive long-term growth. We assign a target multiple of 40x on Sep-28E EPS due to high EPS CAGR of 47% (FY26-29E) with PT INR1,600.”
Disclaimer: This story is for educational and informational purposes only. The views and recommendations above are those of individual analysts or broking companies, not Mint. We advise investors to check with certified financial experts before making any investment decisions.
Asit Manohar has nearly two decades of experience in the mainstream media. In this period, he has served esteemed media organisations like NDTV Profit, The Economic Times, and Zee Business. He has been working at LiveMint Digital since April 2021. During these two decades of journey in mainstream media, Asit has mainly covered external affairs, markets and personal finance. However, his earliest beats include railways, SME, MSME, and politics (Congress beat). Some of his features on political, economic, and foreign policy are documented in the parliamentary records. <br><br> While pursuing his MA (Mass Communication, Session 2004-06), Asit began his media career as a stringer at All India Radio in Varanasi. At AIR Varanasi, Asit worked with the Gyanvani, Yuvvani and Vividh Bharti teams. After working for nearly one year at AIR Varanasi, he shifted to print journalism and started working as a stringer for the HT Media Ltd, Varanasi. At HT Media Ltd in Varanasi, he covered the BHU beat. <br><br> Asit has also worked with some brokerage houses. He has worked with Religare Broking and India Infoline, where he assisted the research team in developing and executing trade strategies for intraday cash, F&O, and commodities. <br><br> Asit is a Gold Medalist in MA (Mass Communication) from BHU, Varanasi. He did his BSc. (Hons) in Mathematics from Magadh University, Bodh Gaya. Asit was a National Talent Scholarship holder during his senior secondary studies (1988-91).
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