LA Biotech Companies Post Huge Year-Over-Year Gains
In a July 27, 2020 article, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported on the LA biotech companies posting huge year-over-year gains.
“Biotech specifically was the best performing subgroup within health care and in the broader markets for that matter,” said Sahak Manuelian, managing director and head of equities trading for downtown-based brokerage firm Wedbush Securities.
Manuelian said that a national market index of bioscience companies that he tracks showed a 27% gain between June 30, 2019, and June 30, 2020.
The biggest LA bioscience percentage gainers for the 12 months ending June 30 were Culver City-based NantKwest Inc. and El Segundo-based NantHealth Inc., the two publicly traded companies in billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Nantworks family of businesses.
The article reports:
NantKwest’s market cap jumped 1,176% to just under $1.3 billion on June 30 while Nant-Health’s market cap surged 728% to $510 million.
Beverly Hills-based Capricor Therapeutics Inc. saw its share price jump 434% for the year ending June 30. Stock of Temple City-based Fulgent Genetics Inc. surged 206%.
Brentwood-based CytRx Corp., enjoyed a 108% increase in its market cap.
Westlake Village-based MannKind Corp. and Pasadena-based Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. were also among the major bioscience gainers, each with market cap jumps of about 75%.
Most of these companies exhibited one trait in common over the past 12 months: the ability to shift their focus to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Biotech innovations are at the core of our fight against current pandemic, where we are particularly seeing a renaissance of a previously overlooked subsector within health care, infectious disease therapeutics and vaccines,” said Mayank Mamtani, senior biotech research analyst and group head of health care research in the San Francisco office of Sawtelle-based B. Riley FBR Inc.
You can read the full article here.
