Inovio’s (INO) INO-4800 can be a Valuable Vaccine Arsenal Upon FDA Approval
Jose Karlo Mari Tottoc
Wed, January 20, 2021, 12:16 PM·4 min read
Wasatch Advisors, an employee-owned investment manager, published its ‘Wasatch Micro Cap Value Fund’ third-quarter 2020 Investor Letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 11.62% was recorded by the fund for the Q3 of 2020, above its Russel Microcap benchmark that returned 3.69%. You can view the fund’s top 10 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Wasatch Advisors, in their Q3 2020 Investor Letter said that they still believe in the capabilities of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: INO) although they trimmed their position in the company. Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a biotechnology company that currently has a $1.7 billion market cap. For the past 3 months, INO delivered a -11.01% return and settled at $10.10 per share at the closing of January 19th.
Here is what Wasatch Advisors has to say about Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in their Investor Letter:
"Another large detractor was Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (INO), even though we had trimmed our position size when the stock price was higher. A biotechnology company, Inovio is developing a Covid-19 vaccine candidate, INO4800. Following an upswell of optimism from March through June, the company’s stock price headed lower during the third quarter amid worries that Inovio may be falling behind its competitors in the race to develop a vaccine for the disease. Concerns grew in late September after the company disclosed in a press release that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had placed a partial hold on a combined Phase 2/3 clinical trial of INO-4800 that Inovio had planned to initiate by the end of the month. According to the company, the FDA had additional questions, including about the vaccine-delivery device to be used in the study.
On the positive side, Inovio stated that the FDA’s partial hold didn’t result from any adverse events in its ongoing Phase 1 trial. Nor does the hold affect the advancement of the company’s other pipeline assets. Should INO-4800 eventually gain approval, we think its advantages—especially with respect to safety, storage and administration—would position it as a potentially valuable weapon in the vaccine arsenal that will be needed to quell the pandemic. Inovio’s DNA medicines currently in development for various cancers and pre-cancers also offer meaningful upside potential in our analysis."
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