Exicure Inc. (XCUR) stock fell by a further 14.34% at $0.3900 in the after-hours, following the announcement of internal investigation results. On December 10, XCUR disclosed the results of its internal investigation and strategic actions for reducing cash burn and prioritizing pipeline focus.
Intraday trading, the stock was down by 2.53% at 929.44 thousand shares, closing the session at $0.4553. Following the news, XCUR stock plunged further down in the after-hours at 100.56 thousand shares.
XCUR stock Movement
After Friday’s announcement, the company’s stock fell down to $0.39 in the after-hours trading session. Hence, the stock has dived below its 52-week low of $0.4100, marking its new 52-week low.
In the past week, the stock has gained 7.21%, while losing 58.61% last month. Moreover, XCUR stock has lost a value of 74.28% year to date.
Currently, the 88.12 million outstanding shares of the company trade at a market capitalization of $40.12 million.
Internal Investigation and Strategic Measures
On Friday, the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of XCUR disclosed the results of the internal investigation. This investigation was conducted on the XCUR’s former Group Lead of Neuroscience, Grant Corbett’s alleged improprieties in the XCUR-FXN preclinical program.
As per the findings of the investigation, Dr. Corbett misreported certain research and development experiments data and results of XCUR-FXN. This includes early autumn 2020, February 2021’s experiments. Moreover, the misreported data was used in multiple presentations and SEC filings from January 7, 2021, to August 12, 2021. Furthermore, Dr. Corbett was solely responsible for the misreporting, and it did not impact any other program of the company.
Strategic Measures
Based on the findings and the previously disclosed strategic review, the company’s Board of Directors implements certain actions. These include workforce reduction, indefinite suspension of the XCUR-FXN program, and restructuring of the executive team. In addition, the further enrollment and ethical wind-down of the AST-008 clinical trial was also discontinued.
Moreover, XCUR announced a prepayment of $10.0 million of its outstanding loans as well.
XCUR’s Financial Highlights
As per November 19’s announcement, the company incurred a net loss of $23.5 million in the third quarter of 2021. This compares to $8.8 million in the third quarter of 2020.
Further, XCUR ended the third quarter of 2021, with cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash of $62.0 million. This compares to $57.3 million in the previous quarter.
