The shares of Arch Coal Inc (NYSE:ACI) are trading 19.23% higher after a recent announcement from the company that it has again delayed its debt swap offer, this time to September 23 from August 28. In other news, the shares of Vital Therapies Inc (NASDAQ:VTL) have jumped by 15.54% following the company releasing additional study data for VTI-208, which is used in the treatment of liver diseases. We’ll take a look at the fundamentals and hedge fund sentiment on these two companies below.
Let’s start with Arch Coal Inc, which has extended the end date for the 2020 Exchange Offer and the Concurrent Exchange Offer. In addition to these, the coal producer has extended the Early Tender Time for the Concurrent Exchange Offer to September 23 from August 28. The shares of the coal producer are down by a startling 94.49% year-to-date, despite the rise today. The precipitous decline forced the company to execute a 1-for-10 reverse stock split in July, as the threat of delistment from the NYSE loomed. Nonetheless, the smart money was maintaining a positive outlook for Arch Coal Inc (NYSE:ACI) as best they could during the second quarter, with their aggregate holdings declining by 52.80% while the shares of the company dropped by 66% during the quarter, showing that hedge funds added some shares to their coffers.
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Among the hedge funds that we track at Insider Monkey, DC Capital Partners was the largest shareholder of Arch Coal Inc (NYSE:ACI) at the end of the second quarter, holding 5.00 million shares. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and D E Shaw, led by David E. Shaw, held significant stakes in the company as well, with 3.65 million shares and 2.79 million shares, respectively. Arrowstreet Capital initiated a new position comprising 931,821 shares valued at $317,000. On the other hand, Vollero Beach Capital Partners sold its entire stake in the company.
Moving on to Vital Therapies Inc (NASDAQ:VTL), the company announced that two investigators presented additional data from its clinical trial of VTI-208 at the 16th International Symposium on Albumin Dialysis in Liver Disease, held on August 29 in Rostock, Germany. The biopharmaceutical company further added that it will continue the analysis of the VTI-208 data set and will design a new clinical phase-3 trial for the experimental drug. Vital Therapies Inc (NASDAQ:VTL) announced the failure of a phase-3 clinical trial of VTI-208 on August 21, indicating no difference in the treated and control subjects participating in the study.
The smart money was also bullish on the stock of the medical company during the second quarter, with their holdings rising by 50.80% to $2.85 million during the quarter. The hedge fund ownership also rose by three in the quarter, as four hedge funds reported positions in the company. What makes these gains even more important is the decline of 15.63% in its share price during the second quarter. D E Shaw was the largest shareholder of Vital Therapies Inc (NASDAQ:VTL) in our database, with ownership of 81,551 shares. Renaissance Technologies, led by Jim Simons, had 17,889 shares of the company in its own portfolio.
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