What happened
Stocks in the ever-volatile biotech sector have many ups and downs, and Monday wasn't one of the ups for Compugen (CGEN 4.76%). The cancer treatment developer published its latest set of quarterly results, and investors showed their displeasure by trading the company's shares down by over 9%.
So what
Before market open, Compugen presented its third-quarter figures. These showed that the biotech, which has not yet won approval for any of its products, booked a net loss of $11.7 million ($0.14 per share) for the period, which was substantially deeper than the $6.2 million deficit in the same quarter of 2021.
Cash and equivalents, meanwhile, fell to just over $88 million from the year-ago figure of nearly $118 million. Compugen said this should provide it with a cash runway sufficient to carry it through the end of 2024, at least.
Analysts following the stock were, on average, estimating a per-share net loss of only $0.12.
Compugen is developing cancer drugs both on its own and in partnership with outside parties. In the biotech's earnings release, it wrote that one of its two proprietary programs, COM701, in combination with another cancer drug, demonstrated "potent immune activation" against tumors arising from a form of colorectal cancer.
Now what
Compugen added that it plans to push forward with COM701 as part of a triple combination with COM902 and another cancer treatment. The company said it would soon present new clinical data in a trial of the former as part of a combination therapy being tested on ovarian cancer patients.
None of Compugen's news or financials from the earnings release was particularly concerning or alarming. It seems that investors might be getting impatient with developments on the pipeline front, concerned about the decline in cash and equivalents, or both.
