What happened
Shares of Roivant Sciences (ROIV 3.07%) were up more than 10% on Thursday. The stock closed on Wednesday at $5.36, then opened on Thursday at $5.75. The stock got as high as $5.92 shortly after 2 p.m. ET. It has a 52-week high of $16.76 and a 52-week low of $2.52. Roivant stock is down more than 42% so far this year.
So what
Roivant is a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in using its platform to launch what it calls "Vants" -- focused biopharmaceutical and health technology companies. The company has built more than 20 such portfolio companies.
Roivant and Pfizer announced on Thursday they are creating a new company to develop and market Roivant's RVT-3101, which is in a phase 2b clinical study to treat ulcerative colitis. The company will be a subsidiary of Roivant and Pfizer will own 25% of it and have the commercialization rights overseas for RVT-3101. The news pushed Roivant briefly up by 10% and also drove Pfizer slightly higher.
Now what
In the second quarter, Roivant said it had $1.6 billion in cash, enough to fund the healthcare company's operations into 2025. Its quarterly revenue was reported as $12.5 billion, down 10.3% year over year, and it lost $0.42 in earnings per share (EPS) compared to an EPS loss of $0.32 in the same period a year ago. The new collaboration with Pfizer should help the company's money crunch. The move also signals that the study for RVT-3101 may be going well; results from the study are expected in the first half of 2023.
