Shares in Aldeyra Therapeutics (ALDX) are climbing 10% in Tuesday’s pre-market trading following a SEC filing showing that Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors now holds a 19.1% in the company.
According to the filing, Perceptive snapped up 3.2 million shares at an average price of $4.25 on Thursday, taking its indirect beneficial ownership to a total of 6,285,458 shares.
The New York-based hedge fund firm has $5 billion under management, and was founded by Edelman in 1999 to focus on investing in biotech stocks. Edelman now has a net worth of $1.2 billion.
Shares in Aldeyra are down 11% year-to-date, but analysts have a bullish Strong Buy consensus on the stock with 4 recent buy ratings. The average analyst price target stands at $27 (470% upside potential). (See ALDX stock analysis on TipRanks)
On July 7, Aldeyra announced development plans for dry eye disease, which will include two pivotal studies focused on investigating RASP as an objective-sign endpoint for dry eye disease (DED).
Reproxalap, the company’s lead clinical candidate, is a novel small molecule RASP inhibitor that covalently binds free aldehydes and diminishes excessive RASP levels.
“In addition to an increased likelihood of FDA approval, the development path could be expedited from the ability to demonstrate RASP in potentially smaller and shorter studies” commented Oppenheimer’s Justin Kim following the announcement.
He is now seeing with greater clarity reproxalap’s potential to be on the market in 2022 and the shift in emphasis on catalysts for the stock as it approaches a potential first commercialization. “Ahead of a richer and now nearer-term catalyst setup, we stay bullish” the analyst concluded. He reiterated a buy rating on the stock and $15 price target (219% upside potential).
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