Plus Therapeutics shares opened 25% higher today after the firm reported Q3/19 financial and business results. In the most recent quarter, the company completed the change of its name, relocated its headquarters to Austin, and raised $15 million for R&D and working capital.
Late yesterday afternoon, Austin, Tex. based clinical-stage pharmaceutical company Plus Therapeutics Inc. (PSTV:NASDAQ), which is focused on developing treatments for patients battling cancer, announced financial and business results for the third quarter of 2019.
The firm reported that contract revenues in Q3/19 were $4.8 million, compared to $0.5 million for Q3/18. The company further noted that it "received notification that a $4.6 million payment from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services / Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response / Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority ("BARDA") to reimburse the Company for work performed during fiscal years 2012 through 2019, will be paid in Q4/19."
For Q3/19, the company reported that net income from continuing operations was $0.526 million, or $0.03 per share., compared to a loss of ($1.396 million) or ($22.27) per share in Q3/18. The firm additionally advised that operating cash burn for the quarter was approximately $2.1 million, and that the firm ended the quarter with approximately $16.8 million of cash and cash equivalents.
Dr. Marc Hedrick, president and CEO of Plus Therapeutics, commented, "Plus Therapeutics emerges from the third quarter with the financial strength, development focus and cost structure to achieve long-term viability and growth...We believe our company is now poised to aggressively move its pipeline through important milestones and to eventual market leadership. We believe that our pipeline has the potential to produce drugs that may provide tremendous benefits to patients and shareholders alike."
The company stated that it now is "concentrating its development in ways that can leverage the U.S. FDA's accelerated regulatory pathways and enable it to apply its in-house expertise in nanoparticle drug design, complex formulation, and drug manufacturing to scale-up."
The firm announced that "its initial development focus will be on DocePLUS (formerly ATI-1123), a complex, injectable, patented, albumin-stabilized pegylated liposomal docetaxel, for which a U.S. Phase 1 clinical trial has been completed and published. The company previously announced that it received feedback from the U.S. FDA that a 505(b)(2) new drug application appears to be an acceptable regulatory approach for DocePLUS." Docetaxel was approved by the FDA in 1999 and is commonly used for treating cancers of the breast, head, neck, stomach, prostate and lung.
Plus Therapeutics, formerly known as Cytori Therapeutics Inc., is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and manufacturing scale up of complex and innovative treatments for patients battling cancer and other life-threatening diseases. This year the company changed its name and relocated its headquarters from San Diego, Calif. to Austin, Texas. The firm notes that it maintained its manufacturing facility in San Antonio, Tex. and that "the move to Austin was driven in part by significant incentives offered by the State of Texas, whose Cancer Prevention & Research Institute is second only to the federal government in public funding of cancer research". The company also recently completed an underwritten public offering with gross proceeds of approximately $15 million which it intends to use for research and development, working capital, potential debt restructuring and general corporate purposes.
Plus Therapeutics began the day with a market capitalization of approximately $8.2 million with about 3.443 million shares outstanding. PSTV shares opened nearly 26% higher today at $3.01 (+$0.62, +25.94%) over yesterday's $2.39 closing price. The stock has traded today on extremely high relative volume between $2.65 to $3.38 per share and is currently trading at $2.67 (+$0.28, +11.72%).
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