2024-04-29 11:26:05 ET
ImmunityBio (NASDAQ: IBRX) stock price has gone parabolic as investors cheer the recent approval of Anktiva , its cancer drug. It has risen for two straight days and is now sitting at its highest level since September 2021. It is up by over 770% from its lowest point in 2023, giving it a market cap of almost $6 billion.
Future acquisition likely?
ImmunityBio shares have been in a strong bull run this year, helped by the recent FDA approval of Anktiva, a drug for treating patients with BCG-unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer with carcinoma.
The approval opens the door for the company to commercialise the drug for a disease that affects thousands of patients in the United States and more others globally. It expects to start selling the drug in the US by mid-May this year.
The stock also jumped after the company released positive results of Anktiva combined with Checkpoint inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer. It has now scheduled a meeting with the FDA in June this year to discuss these results. The company’s CEO said :
“The results we noted with the completion of the QUILT 3.055 basket trial across multiple tumor types in patients with late-stage cancers for whom standard of care plus checkpoints failed, validates our hypothesis that orchestration of NK cells with killer T cells and memory T cells could result in meaningful clinical improvements to current standards of care.”
Therefore, there is a likelihood that the company will continue generating strong financial results later this year as it starts to commercialize its Anktiva drug.
There is also a likelihood that the company could become a buyout target as big companies seek to gain their market share. Some of the potential acquirers are firms like Roche, Celgene, Novartis, Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The risk for investors is that the company could raise capital as its stock jumps. That’s because the company generated a net loss of over $583 million last year after losing $416 million a year earlier. This loss-making will likely continue for a while. ImmunityBio ended the last quarter with about $265 million in cash.
A key positive about all this is that ImmunityBio is mostly held by insiders. 79.6% of all shares are held by insiders, including Patrick Soon-Shiong, who recently provided financing to the company.
ImmunityBio stock price forecast
The weekly chart shows that the IBRX stock price has been in a strong bullish trend in the past few months. It has now crossed the key resistance point at $7.76, its highest point in September last year.
The stock has remained above the 50-week and 25-week Exponential Moving Averages (EMA). At the same time, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) has moved to the overbought level.
Therefore, there is a likelihood that the stock will continue rising in the long term. If this happens, the next point to watch will be the psychological point at $12.
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