Curis, Inc.(NASDAQ:CRIS) stock rose over 3.1% on March 18th 2021 (Source: Google finance) after the company posted decent results for the fourth quarter of FY 20. In December 2020, the company had closed an underwritten public offering of 29,500,000 shares of its common stock, including the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase up to an additional 3,847,826 shares, raising gross proceeds of approximately $169.6 million. For the fourth quarter of 2020, Curis has reported a net loss of $7.5 million as compared to a net loss of $8.6 million, for the same period in 2019. Costs of royalty revenues, mainly amounts due to third-party university patent licensors in connection with Genentech and Roche’s Erivedge net sales, were $0.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2020 and 2019. The Research and development expenses were $5.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2020 as compared to $7.5 million for the same period in 2019. The decline was mainly due to a decrease in clinical and manufacturing costs related to CA-170 and fimepinostat. At the end of December, 2020, Curis’s cash, cash equivalents and investments totaled $183.1 million, and there were approximately 91.5 million shares of common stock outstanding. Curis expects that its existing cash, cash equivalents and investments should enable it to maintain its planned operations into 2024.
CRIS in the fourth quarter of FY 20 has reported the adjusted loss per share of 11 cents, missing the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted loss per share of 13 cents. The company had reported the adjusted revenue growth of 35.9 percent to $3.02 million in the fourth quarter of FY 20, beating the analysts’ estimates for revenue of $2.84 million.
ON the other hand, in November 2020, Curis entered into a CRADA with the NCI. Under the CRADA, Curis will collaborate with the NCI Experimental Therapeutics Program (NExT) and the NCI Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program to conduct non-clinical and clinical studies of Curis’ proprietary compound, CA-4948, an IRAK4 kinase inhibitor that acts as a Toll-like Receptor (TLR) suppressor, as an anti-cancer agent.
In addition, the company plans to report additional clinical data from the Phase 1 study of CA-4948 in patients with AML and high-risk MDS, including patients with spliceosome mutations that encode oncogenic IRAK4-L in mid-year 2021. The company also plans to report additional clinical biomarker data gathered in the Phase 1 study of CA-4948 in patients with R/R NHL in mid-year 2021.