KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, Inc.’s KBIO shares were up 30.8% after the company’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Martin Shkreli tweeted that he would stop lending the company’s shares to people looking to short it.
Shkreli tweeted, “I spoke with my counsel & advisers and decided to stop lending my $KBIO shares out until I better understand the advantages of doing so.” This was followed by yet another tweet saying “I apologize for any inconvenience this may create in lending markets and I will probably resume lending at some point.”
KaloBios, which was at one point of time trading below a penny and was planning to wind down its operations after unsuccessfully finding a strategic alternative of staying afloat in the business, hit a 52-week high on Nov 23. The upsurge was due to the purchase of 70% of KaloBios’ shares by an investor group led by Shkreli. After gaining control of the company, Shkreli assumed the position of the CEO and Chairman of the company’s board of directors.
KaloBios is a California-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of monoclonal antibody therapeutics targeting oncology. The company’s pipeline consists of a couple of candidates developed using its proprietary Humaneered technology – KB004 (phase II – certain hematologic malignancies) and lenzilumab (KB003; enrollment in a phase I/II study for chronic myelomonocytic leukemia scheduled to commence by year end with interim data expected as early as the first half of 2016).
Shkreli, also the founder and CEO of privately held biopharmaceutical company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, was in the news recently when Turing increased the price of Daraprim (approved for the treatment of toxoplasmosis, acute malaria and chemoprophylaxis of malaria due to susceptible strains of plasmodia) from $13.50 to $750 per pill in one shot. The company had acquired the U.S. rights to Daraprim from Impax Laboratories Inc. IPXL in Aug 2015.
The price increase didn’t go down well with the Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton whose “price gouging” tweet led to a major sell-off in the biotech sector.
Meanwhile, investors looking for well-ranked stocks in the health care sector can consider Mylan N.V. MYL and Anika Therapeutics Inc. ANIK. Both carry a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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