What happened
Shares of Sorrento Therapeutics (SRNE.Q) fell 37.8% in October according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Shares peaked on Oct. 13 in anticipation of a research and development presentation to go over the company's vast array of potential COVID-19 products. Sorrento has a pipeline of drugs to treat patients infected with the novel coronavirus, to prevent infection with a vaccine, and to detect the coronavirus with various diagnostic tests.
So what
Following the presentation, investors seem to have realized that while Sorrento has quite a few programs to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the company hasn't made much progress on getting the drugs, vaccines, and tests to a point where it can generate revenue.
During the month, Sorrento announced that it licensed yet another potential COVID-19 treatment from Personalized Stem Cells. But like its other programs, the mesenchymal stem cell program is still at the early stage of development.
A few days later, the biotech announced that Brazilian regulators cleared a 400-patient, mid-stage clinical trial of abivertinib as a treatment for patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, the clinical trial has yet to start enrolling patients, according to the U.S. government's clinical trial database where the study is listed.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
With many companies developing vaccines against the novel coronavirus, including data on Monday from Pfizer and BioNTech, it seems Sorrento is slowly missing the COVID-19 opportunity while it focuses on building the breadth of its offerings. For Sorrento to turn things around, investors should look for the company to focus on a couple of its opportunities and develop them as quickly as possible.
