Boston, MA 10/11/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. (NASDAQ:SNTA) share price shot up by close to 5% during single day of trading on October 10. It was trading at $6.43 per share on October 10 close of business as against a previous day close of $6.12. While the valuation went up the stock did not see an appreciable increase in its trading volume. In fact it was downright tepid with only 1.54 million shares traded on the day in comparison to 1.67 daily average. In spite of the dramatic hike in valuation, the stock is still down 45% from its 52 week high valuations.
While it is tough to point out the trigger which launched the Bull Run on the stock yesterday, one can safely assume that September 25, announcement by its competitor Infinity Pharmaceuticals (INFI) that it was struggling with its phase 2 non small cell lung cancer target drug might have induced the stock of SNTA to rally ahead.
Another reason for the rally can be speculated as below. The development stage bio tech company has a market cap of $443 million and accumulated loss of $76 million. Insiders own close to 13.5% of the stock with total outstanding of 69 million. Insider transactions have gone up by 52% over the past few weeks which can probably explain the 5% jump at low levels of transaction volumes.
In fact on September 16, Synta Pharmaceuticals had announced that U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had Fast Tracked its “ganetespib” trails. This compound is SNTA’s drug candidate being designed to treat patients suffering from “non-small cell lung adenocarcinoma”. The treatment regime involves ganetespib being administered to patients in combination with docetaxel. Safi Bahcall, the President and CEO of Synta has been quoted as saying “We are very pleased that FDA has granted this important designation to the ganetespib development program.”
