£1,000 buys 11,500 shares in this red hot healthcare penny stock that’s smashing GSK

GSK shares are doing really well at the moment. Year to date, they’re up about 20%.

There’s another UK healthcare stock that’s performing far better in 2026, however. This year, it’s up almost 40%.

An exciting health stock

The stock I want to highlight today is hVIVO (LSE: HVO). It’s a small London-based healthcare company that specialises in services for clinical trials and lab testing.

Today, it provides end-to-end early drug development services to some of the largest biopharma companies in the world. To date, it has completed around 2,000 trials.

At present, this stock trades for just 8.7p. That means that a £1,000 investment buys roughly 11,500 shares.

It’s worth noting that the stock pays a small dividend. Currently, the yield is around 2.3%, however, with a penny stock like this, dividends are definitely not guaranteed.

Why the share price is soaring in 2026

Now, this stock has had a rough few years. In short, it got hammered when Donald Trump won the US election and selected vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy as Health Secretary (this created a lot of uncertainty within the biopharma industry).

However recently, it has started to tick up again. There are a few reasons why.

Firstly, both CEO Mo Khan and CFO Stephen Pinkerton bought stock in mid-December. The former purchased 3.3m shares near 6p while the latter snapped up 520,000 shares near 5.5p.

Insider buying like this is a bullish indicator — insiders don’t buy company stock if they expect it to tank.

Note that Khan’s purchase increased the size of his holding by 66% while Pinkerton’s buy increased his position size by 69%. So, these were material investments.

Second, the company put out a trading statement in late January in which it advised that revenue for 2025 would be in line with expectations and that adjusted EBITDA would be positive and above expectations. This was a relief as trading updates since Trump became US President have been poor.

More recently, the share price got a shot in the arm on 10 February after ILiAD Biotechnologies announced the closing of an oversubscribed $115m Series B financing to advance its next-generation whooping cough vaccine, BPZE1. hVIVO has signed a letter of intent with ILiAD for human challenge trials (HCTs), so the company could be looking at a jump in revenues as a result of this funding (analysts at Stifel believe it could be worth about £15m).

An investment opportunity?

So, is this stock worth considering for a portfolio today? I think so.

It’s not a stock I’d load up on. Because risk levels here are high – both revenue and profits could be volatile in the years ahead.

But I do see a lot of potential in the long run. Ultimately, this company is a ‘picks-and-shovels’ play on drug development.

If an investor is willing to take a five-year+ view (our preferred investment horizon here at The Motley Fool), I think this stock could do really well and is worth considering. Over that timeframe, the company could experience significant growth.

It’s worth noting that hVIVO shares currently have a price-to-sales ratio of just 1.2. That compares to 4.8 for US rival Medpace Holdings.

So, at 8.7p, there appears to be some value on offer.