What happened
Shares of Vaxart (VXRT 3.04%), a clinical-stage biotech focused on the development of orally administered vaccines, were down by 10.7% on Tuesday. The market is responding to the company's corporate update, which previewed Vaxart's financial results for the first quarter.
So what
In its corporate update, the company said it expects to release additional data "within days" on its pre-clinical trial testing several potential COVID-19 vaccines. Vaxart had previously released preliminary data for this trial, noting that several of its investigational vaccines for the coronavirus had generated immune responses in all tested animals after a single dose.
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With that said, the little first-quarter financial data that Vaxart shared in its corporate update was a bit of a mixed bag. The company reported that its cash balance at the end of the quarter was $29.9 million, a 256% year-over-year increase. But revenue of $2.8 million plunged by about 48% compared with the first quarter of the previous fiscal year. Vaxart's double-digit losses on the stock market today can likely be attributed to its disappointing revenue for the first quarter of 2020.
Now what
Vaxart's stock is still up by more than 800% year to date. With the company racing to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, investors are hopeful that it will make a fortune off of it, and reward its shareholders in the process. Whether the biotech company can pull that off, however, remains highly unlikely. With no approved products on the market and an inflated stock price due to the faint hope that it will manage to win the race to market a COVID-19 vaccine, Vaxart doesn't look particularly attractive at the moment.
