Insider Buys Point To A Possible COVID Hit With Approval

Image by kjpargeter on Freepik

In their hit, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, The Rolling Stones sang their favorite flavor is Cherry Red. Our favorite flavor is insiders with a track record of being on the right side of the trade. In the same song, the refrain is:

No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need

This week’s insider buying roster is a ‘get what you need’ kind of week as none of the insider buyers had a history of buying low and the stock heading higher. So, instead of track record, we had to go with commitment as measured by dollar amount.

An insider buy of $10,000 has a different feel than $1,000,000. An insider who commits seven-figures to their company stock is not dating the stock, they are saying “I do.”

Immunome, Inc. (IMNM) director Michael Rapp didn’t quite make it to $1 million, but he came close. The director purchased 53,498 shares of the emerging biotech for a total investment of $983,423. (1) While Rapp didn’t cross the seven-figure threshold, a little help from his colleagues pushed the sum of all IMNM insider buys last week past $1.6 million. In all, five Immunome insiders headed to the open market for company stock, adding cluster buying to a commitment buy.

Immunome is a biopharmaceutical company that utilizes its proprietary human memory B cell platform to discover and develop first-in-class antibody therapeutics that are designed to change the way diseases are treated. The company’s initial focus is on developing therapeutics to treat oncology and infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Immunome’s proprietary discovery engine identifies novel therapeutic antibodies and their targets by leveraging the highly educated components of the immune system, memory B cells, from patients whose bodies have learned to fight off their disease.

The company recently reported their antibody cocktail (IMM-BCP-01) was effective in Syrian hamsters for neutralizing COVID variants; South Africa (B.1.351) and UK (B.1.1.7) in live virus testing; Brazil (P.1) and California (B.1.429, also containing B.1.427 mutations) in pseudovirus testing, all of which are CDC-designated “Variants of Concern”. (2)

The results brought the company an additional $4.3 million from the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND), in collaboration with the Defense Health Agency (DHA), for the continued development of an antibody cocktail (IMM-BCP-01) to combat SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. The additional capital comes less than a year after an initial DOD award of $13.3 million, bringing the total commitment to Immunome to $17.6 million. (3)

Management plans on an IND Filing for IMM-BCP-01 in the first half of 2021. (4) Well, there isn’t much time left in the first half of 2021. Perhaps, it’s one of the reasons so many Immunome recently bought stock. Maybe an announcement is imminent?

OVERVIEW:

Immunome, Inc. (IMNM) is dependent on news, specifically on their antibody result for COVID-19 variants. Submitting for approval would likely be a short-term positive for the stock. Longer term, IMNM’s fortunes will likely depend on an FDA approval for use. If they managed to get the thumbs up, then a return trip to the 52-week high of $63.78 might not be out of the question. On the other hand, a thumbs down and shares could challenge its 52-week low of $9.27, maybe lower.

Immunome, Inc. (IMNM) is appropriate for investors with the highest level of risk tolerance.

 

1 – https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1472012.htm

2 – https://finance.yahoo.com/news/immunome-sars-cov-2-antibody-100000136.html

3 – https://finance.yahoo.com/news/immunome-announces-additional-4-3-110000754.html

4 – https://immunome.com/pipeline/