A Look at 5 Major Stock Market Gainers and the Drivers Behind Their Sharp Uptrend

As stock markets are trading in a narrow range with a slight negative bias today, five stocks are showing significant upside price movement backed by high volumes. These stocks are River Valley Bancorp (NASDAQ:RIVR), Trivascular Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:TRIV), Bio Blast Pharma Ltd (NASDAQ:ORPN), Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:PCRX) and Franklin Electric Co. (NASDAQ:FELE). Let’s take a closer look at the reasons behind their sharp increases in the intraday session on Tuesday.

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Before we get to the stocks in question, we should tell you a couple of things about ourselves. We track the activity of around 730 of the best-performing smart money investors and identify the most popular picks among them in order to obtain market-beating returns. Our strategy is supported by extensive backtests that covered the period between 1999 and 2012, and it involves imitating the 15 most popular small-cap picks among the funds from our database. This approach has generated returns of around 102% since August 2012 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by some 53 percentage points (see more details here).

Let’s begin with River Valley Bancorp (NASDAQ:RIVR), which rose by some 45% after news broke that the company has entered into a definitive merger agreement with German American Bancorp., Inc. (NASDAQ:GABC). Under the terms of the deal, which will see River Valley Financial Bank become a part of German American Bancorp, shareholders of River Valley will receive $9.90 in cash and 0.770 shares of German American Bancorp’s stock for each share of River Valley they hold. The transaction, which is expected to provide a strategic edge for both entities, is expected to be completed in the first half of 2016. Only two funds from our database held shares of River Valley Bancorp at the end of June, namely Adam Usdan‘s Trellus Management Company and Neil Chriss’ Hutchin Hill Capital. Trellus also reported 39,468 shares held as of the end of September.

Shares of Trivascular Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:TRIV), the manufacturer of the Ovation Abdominal Stent Graft platform, have risen by 33.83% on the back of the merger announcement between Endologix, Inc. (NASDAQ:ELGX) and TriVascular. The stock-and-cash transaction is valued at $211 million or $9.10 per TriVascular share. The merger is expected to be completed by January 2016 and Endologix’s shareholders will hold around 84% of the combined entity at that time. TriVascular has also reported preliminary unaudited financial results for the third quarter, which included revenues of $9.5 million, representing a 20% growth year-on-year. Positive results, coupled with a strategic merger announcement, have boosted the sentiment towards the stock considerably. Only four funds from our database held shares of TriVascular, equal to 7% of the company at the end of June.

Bio Blast Pharma Ltd (NASDAQ:ORPN) is up by 10.12%, mainly driven by positive interim results from a Phase 2 open label clinical study of lead compound Cabaletta (IV trehalose) in 25 patients with oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD). Bio Blast said that the drug managed to improve the muscle function in patients and reduced difficulty in swallowing. It now plans to discuss the results from the Phase 2 study and a new mid-stage trial with the US Food and Drug Administration.

The stock of the specialty pharmaceutical company, Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:PCRX) has advanced by 16.51% on the back of robust quarterly results reported by the company, which included earnings of $0.35 per share, outperforming the consensus estimate of $0.20, and revenue of $62.20 million compared to the Street’s expectations of $60.44 million. The company reported a 19.6% revenue growth year-on-year, while EPS increased from $0.14 in the same quarter of 2014. A total of 25 funds among those we track disclosed long positions in Pacira in the previous round of 13F filings, while the aggregate value of their holdings being equal to 14% of the company’s outstanding stock.

Franklin Electric Co. (NASDAQ:FELE) has announced its quarterly earnings as well, beating the EPS estimates, but missing on the revenue side. As a result, the stock has gained around 16%. The company posted EPS of $0.45 for the quarter, compared with analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.41, while revenue of $232.5 million missed the estimates of $248.03 million. The revenue fell by 16.4% year-on-year, driven by a stronger dollar and lower oil prices. At the end of June, 12 funds from our database held shares of Franklin Electric Co. (NASDAQ:FELE).

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