By
Godfrey Benjamin
November 18th, 2021
While the company has had great gains as it works on a COVID-19 vaccine, Inovio (INO) stock fell last Friday, was down in the-premarket today but is up as trading began.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: INO) is one of the most talked-about companies today. This is because, just like many others, it is on a race to a COVID-19 vaccine. Inovio Stock (INO) could easily be one of 2020’s best-performing stock as it has risen a few times on positive news of its coronavirus moves. However, even with its gains for the year, its trajectory in the last few days has been far from encouraging. After losing more than 14% on Friday, it has dropped a further 3.11% in pre-market trading. But it is 5.40% up now.
INO stock fell 14.55% and closed at $10.28 on Friday. Currently, at a $10.84 price, INO isn’t at all regaining its losses. While this might seem like a one-off scenario because of the company’s 2020 gains, Inovio’s problems didn’t just begin.
Based in Pennsylvania, Inovio Pharmaceuticals went public back on December 8, 1998, under the name – Genetronics. The company only became Inovio in 2005, after it bought out Inovio AS, a gene delivery technology outfit from Norway. However, investing $10,000 at the IPO would buy shares now worth less than $1,800. Inovio has never really been a successful company.
The company’s relative failure might be tied to the fact that in all of its lifespan, it has not been successful with an approved product. In fact, Inovio ended 2019 with a $740 million accumulated deficit. To stay afloat, the company has repeatedly had to issue new shares or knowingly entered debt positions. Inovio has done both in the past and might continue on that path. Without doing these, Inovio would fold.
INO stock also fell a whopping 28% after the company released disappointing figures for its first-quarter report.
Inovio (INO) Stock Moving Forward
In the last three months, INO has pulled in more than 181% returns. For 2020, INO’s investors have smiled with 233.33% returns. While the company has not been profitable since its IPO, now might be a great time for people to earn from INO. Recent investors are more likely to make a killing off INO, than people who were in it before now.
Away from its stock, Inovio is done with the first phase of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, INO-4800. Although results will not be out until June, there is some optimism. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that there are at least 70 vaccines currently being developed by several companies. Inovio is one of those in the lead.
There is also the opinion that Inovio is being dishonest about its efforts. According to a Citron Research report on April 27, the idea that Inovio has a ‘secret sauce’ no other big pharma firm has figured out, might be false. Inovio’s SVP of research and development Kate Broderick said the company used a computer algorithm to generate the vaccine design. Broderick said that after three hours, ‘we had a fully designed vaccine on paper.’
“So Inovio has a ‘computer algorithm’ that no one else in the world has and is arguably one of the greatest breakthroughs in vaccine discovery in the past 100 years, and yet this ‘computer algorithm’ is not mentioned once in any of its 10-K’s or 10-Q’s?” writes Citron, throwing doubt on the development.
