Marcio Silva
Shares of ALX Oncology (ALX) rocketed in late afternoon trading Friday to close 27% higher after being halted for volatility.
ALX shares opened at $6.58. The stock abruptly soared around 3:00 p.m. ET and was halted for approximately five minutes at 3:01 p.m. ET. After resuming trade, the shares jumped to a high of $9.60 before closing at $8.35.
According to Yahoo and Morningstar data, around 19.5% of ALX’s float was held by short interests as of Sept. 15.
Before market open on Thursday, ALX announced that it had priced an offering of 7.37M shares at $6.38 per share and pre-funded warrants to buy 1.25M shares at $6.379 per share, raising around $55M. Underwriters were granted a 30-day option to buy up to 1.29M additional shares at the public price.
ALX said it planned to use cash from the offering in part to fund development of its oncology drug candidate evorparcept, including the ASPEN-06 clinical study.
Shares of ALX soared 56% on Oct. 3 after it reported positive Phase 2 interim data for evorpacept. The stock fell 16% on Oct. 4 before modestly higher on Oct. 5.
Wall Street analysts rate ALX a buy, on average, with SA’s Quant rating also a buy.
SA analyst Galzus Research, however, rated the stock a strong sell on Oct. 2, citing uncertainties about evoparcept’s drug target CD47 and the company’s limited cash runway.