Tuesday was a breakout day for a few biotech companies, and that was the case even before news broke that the U.S. and China would be meeting at the G20 meeting in Japan. Some made solid runs higher, while others fell off a proverbial cliff. Although the sector is feeling the pinch from the recent market downturn in May, there are a couple standouts.
24/7 Wall St. has picked a few of those standouts from Tuesday to highlight. We have included information about each company, as well as recent trading activity and the consensus price target.
Eiger BioPharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: EIGR) shares made a handy gain on Tuesday after the firm announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for avexitide for the treatment of post-bariatric hypoglycemia (PBH).
For some quick background, PBH is a chronic condition occurring in post-bariatric surgical patients leading to dangerously low, postprandial blood glucose levels. Severe PBH episodes can result in altered mental status, loss of consciousness, seizures, and coma. Shares of Eiger were last seen up about 5% at $11.05, with a 52-week range of $8.40 to $15.33. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $36.00.
Calithera Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: CALA) dipped after the company said that it would be conducting a secondary offering. The firm intends to offer and sell 10.0 million shares with an overallotment option for an additional 1.5 million shares. No pricing details were mentioned in the release. Note that this comes after the company announced positive topline results from its Phase 2 study Entrata evaluating telaglenastat, or CB-839, in combination with the chemotherapy drug everolimus in patients with renal cell carcinoma.
Shares of Calithera Bio were last seen down 11% at $5.16, with a 52-week range of $3.55 to $6.90. The consensus analyst price target is $13.00.
Rockwell Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ: RMTI) is another firm suffering after announcing a secondary offering. The company intends to offer 5.83 million shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $3.00 per share, with an overallotment option to purchase an additional 875,000 shares.
It’s worth pointing out that Rockwell previously announced the submission of a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Intravenous (I.V.) formulation of Triferic, which works to treat patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Shares of Rockwell were last seen down about 28% at $3.17, with a 52-week range of $2.19 to $6.88. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $11.50.
Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd. (NYSE: BHVN) was last seen down a sharp 22% at $44.25 on Tuesday, with the culprit being a proposed secondary offering in the amount of $300 million. This is now down from a 52-week high of $67.86 and the stock has lost half of its value from last Friday alone. Canaccord Genuity biotechnology analyst Sumant Kulkarni defended the stock. His note said:
After an inexplicable mid-morning drop of ~12-15% yesterday (6/17), on which the company said it had heard no news, BHVN shares were down even more significantly (~28%) after hours/pre-market on announcement of a $300 million share offering. The curious mix of events – a buyout rumor starting in April, a pull out of an investor conference last week, and yesterday’s stock action – leading into this offering means several investors (especially those hoping for a buyout) come out of this event shaken. While we too hope the narrative could have somehow been different (or perhaps controlled differently?), we believe the significant downside over the past few days presents a buying opportunity on a stock that has several important catalysts coming up over the next 6-9 months, the most important of which could be the potential approval of rimegepant (acute treatment of migraine), and Phase 3 data on rimegepant for migraine prevention.
The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (NYSEArca: XBI) was last seen up 1.45% at $86.59 and the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (NASDAQ: IBB) was last seen up 1.3% at $107.48. That is against gains of 1.1% for the S&P 500 and 1.4% for the Nasdaq Composite Index.
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