Inovio Pharmaceuticals Falls on Short Seller’s Comments About Coronavirus Hype

Inovio Pharmaceuticals shares were falling on Wednesday after short seller Muddy Waters revealed that it had taken a short position in the stock.

Muddy Waters, led by investor Carson Block, said in a series of tweets that a recent court decision “makes it clear that Inovio lacks manufacturing capacity to get remotely near purported goal of 1 million doses in 2020 and 100 million in 2021.” The decision in question was made in a case Inovio brought against GeneOne Life Science Inc. and VGXI Inc. over a supply agreement.

The short seller also noted that Citron Research, another short seller, had compared Inovio to scandal-ridden Theranos earlier this year and called it ‘one of the longest running and most blatant stock promotion schemes ever witnessed.”

“We concur,” said Muddy Waters.

Inovio is currently conducting a Phase 1 trial of its vaccine candidate, INO-4800, and has said it expects to start Phase 2/3 trials in September.

It was last month that the company reported second quarter financial results.

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, INOVIO’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “The second quarter further demonstrated the versatility and potential of INOVIO’s DNA medicines platform to meet urgent global health needs. In addition to advancing our DNA vaccine INO-4800 to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, INOVIO presented encouraging results for one of the most devastating and difficult-to-treat cancers, GBM. We believe our DNA medicines are ideally suited to safely drive robust immune responses across infectious diseases and cancer, and we look forward to publishing our latest INO-4800 data, starting our Phase 2/3 COVID-19 clinical study in the U.S. in September, and expanding the manufacturing capacity to produce at least 100 million doses of INO-4800 in 2021 via our growing global coalition of partners and funders.”

Shares are still up 218% in the year to date.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: INO) and have not been compensated for this article.