Wall Street’s main stock indexes pulled back from Monday’s record levels amid investor concern about the size and timing of US government aid checks.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index both declined 0.3%, while the S&P 500 Index slipped 0.2%.
SAP’s Qualtrics International has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US for up to $100 million. According to an SEC filing, Qualtrics, which was snapped up by SAP for $8 billion two years ago, expects that the IPO will be priced between $20 and $24 per share. The offering price would value the company at $12 billion to $14.4 billion on a fully diluted basis. Qualtrics disclosed that funds affiliated with Silver Lake Technology Management have agreed to buy $550 million worth of class A common stock via a concurrent private placement transaction. Shares depreciated less than 1%.
Shares of RMG Acquisition sank 12% after the company reported that 99.8% of its shareholders approved its merger with Romeo Systems at an extraordinary meeting on Dec. 28. The combined company will be renamed Romeo Power and will trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol RMO. Romeo Power is an energy technology company focused on designing and manufacturing lithium-ion battery modules and packs for commercial electric vehicles. Earlier this month, BTIG analyst Gregory Lewis initiated coverage on the stock with a Buy rating as he believes that the planned merger with Romeo Power puts the company in a “strong position” to benefit from the ongoing electrification of the global truck market.
In corona updates, shares of Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings dived 54% as four analysts downgraded the stock’s rating to Hold from Buy even as the company announced that the Singapore Health Sciences Authority approved the start of the Phase 2 clinical study of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate ARCT-021. The company said that the approval was based on Phase 1/2 data, which showed favorable tolerability of the vaccine candidate and immunogenicity. The Phase 2 study will build upon the Phase 1/2 study results and will include both single dose and prime-boost regimens in up to 600 participants. “We are downgrading given underwhelming results from ARCT’s Singapore-based Phase 1/2 study evaluating COVID-19 vaccine candidate, ARCT-021. The lack of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody (NAb) titers at or above levels seen in convalescent sera reduces our confidence that ARCT-021 will be able to achieve competitive levels of vaccine efficacy with single-shot dosing,” Raymond James analyst Steven Seedhouse wrote in a note to investors.
Meanwhile shares in Novavax advanced 1.8% after the drugmaker finally announced the initiation of the pivotal Phase 3 study in the US and Mexico of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, NVX-CoV2373. The start of the trial has been delayed twice already. Novavax is currently conducting multiple trials across different phases in the US, UK, South Africa and Australia, with results from these trials expected to be released in the first quarter of 2021.
Quanterix announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its Simoa Semi-Quantitative SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody test. The test can be run on the Simoa HD-X analyzer which is an automatic high-throughput immunoassay instrument. The Simoa Semi-Quantitative SARS-CoV-2 antibody test targets spike protein antibodies that are directed against the region of the coronavirus. The Simoa Semi-Quantitative SARS-CoV-2 is tailored to measure the antibody response to vaccine therapy.
Aprea Therapeutics lost another 5% after tanking 78% on Monday. RBC Capital downgraded the stock’s rating to to Hold from Buy as the biopharma company reported that its Phase 3 trial of Eprenetapopt molecule in TP53 Mutant Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) treatment failed to meet its primary endpoint. RBC Capital analyst Gregory Renza also slashed the stock’s price target from $40 to $10. “While the company continues to proceed with other pipeline programs around eprenetapopt, we believe the news has an adverse read-through to the path forward and lowers our confidence in the potential of the molecule and the programs,” Renza commented.
