Rigel and Pfizer Amend Deadline Date on Option to Renew Asthma/Allergy Drug Discovery Collaboration:
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: RIGL - news) today announced that it and Pfizer have agreed to amend the deadline until January 25, 2001, for Pfizer to elect whether to continue their asthma/allergy research collaboration with Rigel for an additional year.
Rigel Pharmaceuticals uses post-genomics combinatorial biology technology.They have programs in asthma/allergy, autoimmunity, transplant rejection, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and cancerous tumor growth.
Besides the collaboration with Pfizer they have a multi-year collaborations with Cell Genesys, Janssen Pharmaceutica and Novartis.
They also have collaborated with Neurocrine.
So far this year the stock price has shown quite wide swings.
On January 3 it opened on an up-gap that carried it to an intra-day high of 12 1/8.That was a 69% up-swing from its low of 7 3/16 on December 22.
Then after an upgrade by Goldman on Jan.4 to Outperform, it started a downward move back to 7 13/16 on Jan.9 That is again about the level of the IPO last November.
The company's financial position seems somewhat precarious since they reportedly lost $8.32 in the last 12 months and more than 1/2 of that was in the last quarter.They reportedly have $2.37 cash/share.Insiders hold 85% of the 35.9 million shares, which leaves a small float of 5 million shares.
It seems to me we can expect more wide swings ahead. Will see what the decision from Pfizer is in 10 days.
Bernard |
