Honestly, the biotech sector is a graveyard of "almost" stories. Companies spend a decade and a billion dollars on a drug, get it to the finish line, and then realize they have no idea how to actually sell it. For a long time, that was the exact shadow hanging over Heron Therapeutics Inc stock. You’ve got these great products, particularly Zynrelef for post-surgical pain, but the stock price spent years looking like a flatline on a heart monitor.
It was frustrating.
But things changed fast in the last few months of 2025. If you've been watching the ticker lately, you've seen HRTX shaking off its "penny stock" reputation. As of mid-January 2026, the price is sitting around $1.49, which might not sound like much until you realize it’s up nearly 20% in the last week alone.
Why now? Basically, Heron stopped acting like a research project and started acting like a business.
The Zynrelef Turnaround
The big problem with Zynrelef wasn't that it didn't work. It’s a dual-acting local anesthetic that handles pain for 72 hours without the need for opioids. That’s the holy grail in a world trying to move away from addictive painkillers. The problem was the delivery. Doctors hated the old "vial spike" system because it was clunky and took forever to prep in a sterile operating room.
Heron finally fixed that with the Vial Access Needle (VAN).
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They finished rolling out the VAN in late 2025. It cut prep time from three minutes down to about 20 seconds. Surgeons are busy people; they don't want to wait for a bottle to drain. Since that change, Zynrelef net revenue jumped 49% in Q3 2025, and preliminary numbers for Q4 show even more momentum. Revenue for that single drug hit roughly $12.5 million in the final quarter of the year.
That’s real growth.
Money Talks: The 2025 Revenue Surprise
When Heron reported its preliminary full-year 2025 results on January 9, 2026, the market actually listened. Total net revenue hit about $154.9 million. While the oncology side (Cinvanti and Sustol) is still the steady breadwinner, the "Acute Care" side is where the fire is.
Look at Aponvie, their injectable for postoperative nausea. It grew over 170% year-over-year. It’s still a smaller slice of the pie at $3.8 million for Q4, but it’s proving that Heron’s new dedicated sales team isn't just sitting around.
The company even hit a milestone many thought was impossible a few years ago: positive Adjusted EBITDA. They were guiding for $9 million to $13 million for the full year 2025. For a small biotech, moving from "burning cash" to "making money" is like crossing the Rubicon.
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What Most People Get Wrong About the Debt
The bears always pointed to the debt. It was a massive weight. But in August 2025, CEO Craig Collard and his team pulled off a pretty slick capital restructuring. They partnered with Hercules Capital for a $110 million facility and pushed their debt maturities out to 2030.
Basically, they bought themselves five years of breathing room.
They also settled with Mylan Pharmaceuticals over patent litigations for Cinvanti and Aponvie. The deal keeps generics off the market until June 2032. That gives Heron a massive runway to milk those profits and reinvest them into the Zynrelef prefilled syringe, which is expected to launch in early 2027.
The NOPAIN Act Tailwind
There’s a massive regulatory shift happening right now that most retail investors are ignoring. It’s called the NOPAIN Act.
Started in 2025, this law basically mandates that Medicare provides separate, higher reimbursement for non-opioid pain treatments in outpatient settings. Before this, hospitals often lost money if they used Zynrelef because it was "bundled" into a flat payment. Now, they get paid specifically for using it.
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This takes the "it’s too expensive" argument off the table for hospital administrators.
Is Heron Therapeutics Inc stock a "Buy"?
Wall Street seems to think so, though you should always take analyst targets with a grain of salt. Right now, there are about nine "Buy" ratings and zero "Sells."
The average price target is hovering around $4.50 to $4.78. If the stock is at $1.49 today, that’s a projected upside of over 200%.
But let's be real: biotech is risky. If a competitor launches a better product or if the prefilled syringe trial hits a snag, that growth curve could flatten. Also, the oncology revenue actually dipped slightly last year. It’s a competitive space, and Heron has to defend its turf while trying to expand Zynrelef.
What You Should Do Next
If you’re looking at Heron Therapeutics Inc stock as a potential play, don't just look at the stock chart. The chart tells you what happened; the earnings call tells you what's going to happen.
- Monitor the Q1 2026 Earnings: Expected around early March. Look specifically at Zynrelef unit demand. If it isn't growing at least 20-30% year-over-year, the "VAN boost" might be wearing off.
- Check the J-Code Impact: The permanent J-code for Zynrelef went live in October 2025. We need to see if this actually simplified billing for doctors in the first half of 2026.
- Watch the Cash: They had about $55.5 million in the bank as of late 2025. Make sure they aren't burning through that too fast as they scale the sales team.
Investing here is essentially a bet on Zynrelef becoming the standard of care for the 13 million orthopedic procedures performed annually in the U.S. It's a high-conviction play, not a "sure thing," but the fundamental story is the cleanest it has been in half a decade.