Shares of autoimmune disease focused biopharma company Immunovant Inc (US:IMVT) mounted an impressive sharp gain of 107% since the beginning of last week as a wave of news flow sparked a flash of investor confidence that had faded over the course of 2022.

The news was a significant headache for UBS analyst and Biotech Sector Managing Director, Colin Bristow, who downgraded IMVT from ‘buy’ to ‘hold’  while slashing his price target from $7 to $5 on Monday the 26th of September.

Bristow in the report cited the company’s lack of upcoming catalysts with no clinical readouts scheduled until the second half of 2023.

In the days that followed, Immunovant management announced a new next generation Anti-FcRn (neonatal crystallizable fragment receptor) named IMT-1402. 

IMVT management noted that IMVT-1402 had been observed to have minimal or no impact on levels of albumin and LDL in animal studies.

The groups M.D. and CEO Pete Salzmann commented stating “With these encouraging results, we are pursuing an accelerated development plan to bring IMVT-1402 to the clinic with a Phase 1 study planned to start in early 2023 contingent on IND clearance”

Salzmann also reiterated that the firm’s cash runway guidance into 2025 remained unchanged as they had already factored in the expected phase 1 development costs for the new product.

The announcement had created a catalyst that had been missing for investors as described by Mr Bristow and sent shares soaring 20% higher by the end of the week.

On Tuesday this week, Immunovant boosted investor sentiment even higher after announcing that they had secured $75 million in funding from the sale of shares in an underwritten offering.

The offering was headed by institutions SVB Securities and Truist Securities that helped the company sell 12.5 million shares at $6 per share.

Management played the spark of investor confidence extremely well as they were able to capitalise on the inflated share price and raise capital well above the 30-day VWAP.

Analyst Thomas Smith from SVB Securities was encouraged by the firm’s initiatives to diversify its pipeline beyond batoclimab and sees the potential for longer-term flexibility and strategic value from having multiple anti-FcRn candidates that are addressing a broad range of autoimmune diseases. SVB Securities continues to hold an ‘outperform’ recommendation on the stock.

INVT has a consensus ‘overweight’ rating and a $9.25 price target which is below the share price. The consensus recommendation is comprised of buy, hold and sell calls across the street.

Fintel’s insider trading report on IMVT spotted Board member Atul Pande who acquired 15,000 shares at $5.60 following the IMVT-1402 announcement.

The transaction was worth $84,000 and increased Pande’s total share count to 20,000 in the company.

IMVT will next update investors at the third quarter financial results, due around mid November.

This article originally appeared on Fintel

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