Chief quality officer makes $71,000 buy and fund adds 1.5 million shares.
Bryan Ball, Chief Quality Officer at Immunomedics (IMMU), bought 5,000 shares, paying around $71,000 to do so. This doubles his stake, following a similarly-sized buy back in June.
Besides insider buying by officers, a number of funds have been accumulating shares as well, including a 1.5 million share buy by Avoro Capital Advisors in early October. The fund now owns over 21 million shares, or about 11 percent of the total shares outstanding.
Immunomedics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing antibody-based products for the treatment of cancer. The company is not yet profitable, and shares are down 30 percent in the past year as the pharma space has remained out of favor with the overall market.
Action to take: Many firms don’t have a Chief Quality Officer, but seeing repeated buys from one at a firm developing clinical-stage drugs seems like a solid insider to buy in as well. And given the Avoro stake, it’s likely that shares have huge appreciation potential over the long haul, although the sector may remain out of the market’s favor for a while yet.
Investors should look to buy shares under $14, right around where shares trade today, but well above the 52-week low of $12.
Speculators may want to look at the January 2021 $18 call, which for around $2.70 or $270 per contract, could have a huge move on a rally in shares, either from an industry-related event or a company-specific announcement favorable to one of its products.