Why Shares of Ambrx Biopharma Soared This Week

What happened

Shares of Ambrx Biopharma (NASDAQ:AMAM) were up more than 27% for the week as of Thursday's close, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The clinical-stage biotech closed last week at $10.25, then rose as high as $12.20 on Wednesday.

So what

The company is benefiting from two moves that happened last Friday. First, after the markets closed, Ambrx announced it had received the go-ahead from its board to move its official domicile from the Cayman Islands to Delaware, pending a vote by shareholders on Oct. 10. The move will allow Ambrx to be listed in certain stock indexes that now are unavailable to it because it is a foreign-listed company. It also opens the doors to certain institutional investors.

In line with that, the company got a big buy last Friday from Cormorant Asset Management, which purchased more than 2.1 million shares, pushing its overall stake in the company to more than 69.4 million shares.

Now what

The company is a long way from being profitable. It focuses on oncology therapies using antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), which combine a cancer-killing chemotherapy with an antibody that targets a cancer cell and a link that connects the antibody to the chemo payload.

The company is scheduled to present details regarding its pipeline next Wednesday at the Cantor Fitzgerald Global Healthcare Conference in New York. The company's lead therapies are ARX517, an ADC targeting prostate cancer that is in a phase 1 trial, and ARX788, an ADC targeting HER2 to fight breast cancer, which is in a phase 2 trial. It has four other partnered or collaboration programs.

As of the second quarter, the company only had $1.1 million in revenue and $17.8 million in net losses, along with $228 million in cash.

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Jim Halley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.