Atreca Inc (fka BCEL)

[Vader69]

Atreca (BCEL)

Strategy: Long Term Hold
1 year Price Target: $25-$35 with median target 29.50. BCEL has an 8/9 BUY rating & 1 OUTPERFORM on its 12-month price forecast.
Purpose: Atreca plans to generate clinical candidates from its large intellectual property library of 1400 novel antibodies thru collaborations w/leading biotech companies in those areas.
-Antibodies are generated from active patient B cell responses which provide immediately relevant and functional human antibodies that serve as the foundation of their therapeutic candidates for possible novel targets and biology.
-They have designed and built industrialized wet-lab and supporting bioinformatics capacity across their platform
- “As of July 1, 2020, we have built a broad repository of over 1,500 samples from over 650 donors, representing over 30 different solid tumor types.”

Financials:
Market Cap: 465-537M USD
Debt: $0 (zero) debt
Shares Outstanding: 29.99M
Public Float: 28.07M
Dilution: 9,466,951 aggregate shares in Aug 2020
Average Volume: 140.99K NASDAQ
52 week high: 29.35
52 week low: 10.88
Cash on Hand: 259M as of Q3 2020
Operating Income: Approx -20million per quarter
Cash Burn: 70-100M per year
Cash runway of approx 3.7 years as of Q3 2020

SEC Form S1: Initial Offering Registration Statement
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1532346/000104746919003318/a2238867zs-1.htm

Product Pipeline:
Drug 1: ATRC-101 – currently in phase 1 trials expected to report Q4 2020
Mechanism of Action: the target of ATRC-101 serves as a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex.
-ATRC-101 has demonstrated robust anti-tumor activity as a single agent in multiple preclinical syngeneic tumor models, including one model in which PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors typically display limited activity. Further, ATRC-101 has been shown to react in vitro with a majority of human ovarian, non-small cell lung, colorectal, breast cancers and acral melanoma samples from multiple patients.
Patent: World Wide Rights, “February 2020, we filed a nonprovisional patent application in the United States, an international patent application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and a patent application in Taiwan, each relating to ATRC-101 and its variants.”
Facts: In Jan 2020, FDA to initiate a phase 1b study using its Driver Antigen Engagement product candidate ATRC-101 to treat solid tumors in early 2020.
Drug 2: Directed Killing Antibodies, projected phase 1 in 2021 but requires biotech partner
Drug 3: T Cell Engager Antibodies, projected phase 1 in 2021 but requires biotech partner
Drug 4: Toxin-Conjugate Antibodies, projected phase 1 in 2021 but requires biotech partner

Other Research:
-In April 2020, we announced plans to collaborate with BeiGene Ltd. and IGM Biosciences, Inc., or IGM, which enable the parties to leverage their combined technology and expertise to discover, develop, and manufacture novel IgM and IgA antibodies targeting SARS-CoV-2 for the potential treatment of COVID-19
- In July 2020, we entered into a collaboration and license agreement with Xencor, Inc., or Xencor, to research, develop and commercialize T cell engaging bispecific antibodies as potential therapeutics in oncology

Catalysts:
Q4 2020/Q1 2021 – Phase 1 data release on ATRC-101
3/17/21 - Q4 2020 Financials
2021 – Initiation of any or all of their projected phase 1 antibody studies

ATRC-101 Phase 1b Trial: Clinical Trials.gov NCT04244552
-First patient dosed on 2/13/20, Phase 1b evaluation for antibody use in select solid tumor cancers. It is an open-label, dose escalation, monotherapy trial with an adaptive 3+3 design will enroll patients with colorectal, ovarian, non-small cell lung and breast cancers and acral melanoma. Over 50% of tumor tissue samples evaluated by Atreca in each of these cancer types were positive for the antigenic target of ATRC-101, an RNP complex
- In May 2020 BCEL announced that that had successfully completed the first dosing cohort of their Phase 1b study of ATRC-101 in select solid tumors, and that they were commencing screening patients to enroll in the second dose cohort.
-Results were initially supposed to be back Q2 2020 but pushed back due to COVID. Now expected Q4 2002 or Q1 2021

Trial Objectives:
1) characterize the safety of ATRC-101
2) determine a recommended dose for future studies
3) evaluate potential biomarkers and initial signals of clinical activity of ATRC-101

Future Plans: Upon confirmation of safety, Atreca plans to test ATRC-101 further as a single agent and in combination with checkpoint inhibitors and select chemotherapeutics.

Shareholders:
Institutional investors own 83.39% of the total float
Individual stakeholders own 3.39%
Black Rock bought 519.k shares on 9/30/20 (6.01% total shares)
ECOR1 Capital bought 937k shares on 9/30
Redmile bought 1.6 million shares on 9/30/20
Baker Brothers is the second largest shareholder with 11.78% stake
Wellington Management Co. LLP is the largest institutional shareholder at 11.8%
Other institutional holders include Vanguard Group (4.43%), Citadel Advisors (1.92%)

**Of note, multiple small volume insider sales were noted April-Aug from the CTO and CSO. Likely related to planned dilution. This corresponded with a price decrease of about 15% that quarter but prices have now stabilized and institutional ownership increased notably in Q3.