What happened
Shares of Athenex (ATNX), a commercial-stage biopharma focused on cancer, jumped 17% as of 1:27 p.m. EDT on Tuesday after an SEC filing revealed that a major shareholder recently added to its position in the company.
So what
Investors can thank Perceptive Advisors for today's double-digit jump. Perceptive Advisors is a venture capital fund that specializes in investing in companies from the life sciences industry, and has more than $4.2 billion in assets.
An SEC filing that was made public yesterday revealed that Perceptive Advisors purchased an additional 50,000 shares of Athenex's stock for an average price of $10.93 on Oct. 17, 2019. That purchase was made public because Perceptive Advisors already owned more than 10% of Athenex's shares prior to the addition.
Image source: Getty Images.
Traders are bidding up the share price in response to this news because Athenex ended yesterday's trading session at $9.60, which is a much lower price than Perceptive Advisors just paid to buy more stock.
Now what
Athenex recently shared phase 3 data with investors from a trial that was researching its drug called Oraxol as a hopeful treatment for metastatic breast cancer. The trial showed that using Oraxol led to a statistically significant improvement in the overall response rate, which was great news.
From here, the company plans to present the clinical trial data at an upcoming scientific meeting and also request a pre-NDA meeting with the FDA as soon as possible.
Overall, there are a lot of reasons for biotech investors to be excited about what's happening at Athenex right now. I plan to follow this business with great interest.
