2 Beaten-Down Stocks to Buy on the Dip

Prosper Junior Bakiny, The Motley Fool

Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:04 PM 5 min read

While the recent market dip has created bargains, some stocks have sufficiently lagged the market in the past year to warrant that title regardless of what's transpired in 2025. Among them are CRISPR Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CRSP) and Merck (NYSE: MRK), two companies that develop innovative medical therapies.

CRISPR Therapeutics' shares are down by 41% over the trailing-12-month period, while Merck's have declined by 22%. Though both companies have encountered some headwinds, there are good reasons for patient investors to initiate positions, especially at current levels.

It's not hard to figure out why CRISPR Therapeutics, a gene-editing specialist, isn't performing well. Though the company earned approval for Casgevy, which treats a pair of rare blood diseases, in late 2023, it's still not generating much revenue from it. Administering gene-editing therapies is expensive and time-consuming. Furthermore, CRISPR Therapeutics will share the profits generated from Casgevy with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, with which it developed the medicine; Vertex is entitled to 60% of the program profits.

Still, Casgevy is now approved in the U.S., the U.K., and the European Union, in addition to several countries in the Middle East where the market opportunity may be larger than it is in the U.S. The mid-cap CRISPR Therapeutics would have never sought approvals in all those regions -- it's far too costly to do so for a company of this size. Even if it had, it wouldn't have done it that fast. So Casgevy's target market is much bigger than it otherwise would be, thanks to CRISPR Therapeutics' partnership with Vertex.

Although it isn't yet contributing much to CRISPR Therapeutics' results, Casgevy will, eventually. It costs $2.2 million per treatment course, and hardly any approved competing treatments can challenge it. Casgevy is a one-time curative option for two otherwise lifelong diseases that rob patients of years -- or decades -- of average life expectancy, and cause severe hardships and financial burdens to them and their families.

Elsewhere, CRISPR Therapeutics is developing other gene-editing medicines. It's working on a functional cure for type 1 diabetes. Meanwhile its CTX112, being developed to treat B-cell malignancies, has earned the Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This designation is granted to and helps speed up the development of medicines that target serious or life-threatening conditions and have provided promising early evidence of efficacy.