Today’s Research Reports on Stocks to Watch: Intercept Pharmaceuticals and Conatus Pharmaceuticals

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 6, 2018 / Shares of biotech stock Intercept headed higher on Thursday after the company announced that it had priced its upsized underwritten public offering. Shares of Conatus Pharmaceuticals weren’t as lucky and were seeing a lot of red after the company’s pipeline candidate emricasan failed to reach its primary endpoint in a study.

RDI Initiates Coverage on:

Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=ICPT

Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc.
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=CNAT

Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. shares closed up 9.94% yesterday on about 4.7 million shares traded. Trading volume was significant compared to the stock’s average of just about 833,000 shares. The biotech company announced that it has priced its upsized underwritten public offering of 2,343,750 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $64.00 per share. Additionally the company said that it has agreed to sell another 1.56 million shares to major institutional shareholders in a private placement at that same price. This offering would raise $250 million for the company and give it capital for its research efforts and help it commercialize its drug pipeline. Intercept has a lead product candidate called obeticholic acid (OCA), a bile acid analog, which has a structure based on a naturally occurring human bile acid that selectively binds to and activates the farnesoid X receptor (FXR). The company is developing OCA to treat various non-viral progressive liver diseases, such as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), primary sclerosing cholangitis, and biliary atresia.

Access RDI’s Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Research Report at:
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=ICPT

Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc. was one of the biggest decliners on the NASDAQ on Thursday, closing the day down 31.45%. The pharmaceutical company sank after an announcement was made that its pipeline candidate, emricasan, did not achieve primary endpoint in a phase IIB study, POLT-HCV-SVR. The study is evaluating the drug candidate in patients with fibrosis or cirrhosis caused by recurrent HCV infection. According to data in the study, the oral caspase inhibitor did not achieve a significantly better overall response rate compared with placebo in the overall patient population. The company’s CEO Steve Mento, Ph.D. remained optimistic however on a conference call. He noted that the company had put a 15% improvement over placebo in the POLT-HCV-SVR trial as a threshold for further evaluation of emricasan. Despite not meeting that, in subgroups of patients with more severe fibrosis at enrollment, the improvement was seen. Mento remarked, “We believe that our data are the first demonstration of emricasan’s anti-fibrotic activity by histology.”

Access RDI’s Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc. Research Report at:
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=CNAT

Our Actionable Research on Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICPT) and Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNAT) can be downloaded free of charge at Research Driven Investing.

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