On April 12, Lixte Biotechnology Holdings Inc. (LIXT) came out with a couple of pieces of news that made the stock move up and down. The latest news from the company was a registered direct offering priced At-The-Market. This caused the stock to plunge down to $1.66 in the after-hours with a loss of 9.78%. This decline came after the stock’s rally of a humungous 67.27% in regular trading. The rally was a result of promising preclinical data from its lead program in KRAS-Mutant Cancers.
LIXT’s ATM Offering
The company has commenced a registered direct offering of 2,900,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $2.00 per share. Moreover, the offering is expected to generate gross proceeds of roughly $5.8 million for the company. LIXT plans to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes as well as for the development of its lead clinical compound.
With WestPark Capital Inc. and WallachBeth Capital LLC as co-placement agents, the offering is expected to close around April 14, 2022.
Lead Cancer Candidate Data
LB-100 is the company’s lead clinical cancer candidate which is currently under development.
On Monday, Professor Rene Bernards, Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Amsterdam, presented new data on LB-100 at the AACR Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) commenced on April 10 in New Orleans, LA, and will conclude on April 13, 2022. The presentation was a part of the celebratory events of Prof. Bernards’ selection as the awardee of the 2022 AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship.
The new data suggest that LB-100 induces further activation of oncogenic signaling in various KRAS-mutant cancer. Thus, rendering the cancer cells vulnerable to anti-cancer therapy.
Healthcare Stocks
Despite the uncertainties in the market, healthcare stocks have had a record week. Amid the global volatility due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China-U.S. audit issues, and the increasing inflation and spiking interest rates, investors are placing safe bets. As always seen, the healthcare sector is one of the least impacted sectors by conflicts and crises. Thus investors have been flocking to healthcare stocks recently while the companies themselves also had a role to play.
Therefore, the S&P 500 Healthcare has outperformed the market with a rise of 3.4% in recent days against a decline of 1.3% in the overall S&P 500.
Conclusion
After gaining a huge chunk during regular trading on Tuesday, LIXT fell down in the after-hours due to ATM offering. Given the huge gain, the stock was already posing for corrections soon, so, the news of the offering brought about the downfall before corrections could apply.
