It’s one thing for a stock to go up 100% in a day. 200% is entirely another. But when it approaches 300%, that’s too big a jump to not mention. And that’s what happened to biotech stock CohBar (NASDAQ:CWBR) as it nearly quadrupled at one point in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
What sent CohBar up to a point where it nearly quadrupled in value in one day’s trading? A potential new merger that might take it private with Morphogenesis, a privately-held company that’s moving toward a vaccine for cancer. Should the merger go through, CohBar and Morphogenesis would become TuHARA Biosciences Inc., and CohBar shareholders would land a dividend roughly equivalent to 3.3 shares of CohBar. Once the merger is complete, CohBar holders would own around 15% of the combined company, while Morphogenesis would net about 77% of CohBar common stock.
TuHARA Biosciences, in turn, would trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market as a result, and it would continue Morphogenesis’ focus on fighting cancer. However, there’s another fight in the works, and it’s a legal battle. Investor rights law firm Halper Sadeh LLC is investigating the merger on the grounds that it may not be fair to CohBar shareholders. Considering how much CohBar shares went up just today, it doesn’t seem that CohBar shareholders are particularly concerned and are rushing to buy in. However, they might not have gotten the best deal, and that’s one thing Halper Sadeh is considering.
Interestingly, CohBar’s rise today didn’t happen all at once. Rather, it happened in two stages. A look at the last five trading days for CohBar shows a mostly flat stretch. Then, there’s one spike that sent CohBar shares up before they settled into a new plateau with a slight downward cast. A second spike followed, and stair-stepped CohBar shares up one more level. Now, CohBar shares have once again plateaued around the $6 per share level.
