Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ:NYMX) announced on Monday that its phase 3 studies of fexapotide triflutate for BPH, NX02-0017, and NX02-0018, have successfully attained the targeted primary endpoint of long-term symptomatic, statistically-significant benefit, delivering better results than the placebo group. Fexapotide delivered an impressive safety profile, showing no short or long term toxicity. Moreover, the two studies revealed no molecular side effects relating to the drug. With this success, the company now has a solid basis for seeking approvals from authorities for fexapotide triflutate in varying territories and jurisdictions. After the news, the Street reacted positively, sending the stock up by just under 100% on Monday. The success is a turn of fortunes for Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation, which nosedived late last year after reports revealed that its late stage tests on fexapotide triflutate, which is its drug for treating enlarged prostates, failed. The new development is good news for the company, considering that the research has been ongoing for the past three-and-a-half years and has taken a number of developments into account, delivering positive results. These results include fewer benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) surgeries, and long term improvement in BPH symptoms.
The Canada-based pharmaceutical company has gained 535% year-to-date, including Monday’s trading. While this is a great improvement so far, it still has a long way to go to reach the $5.15 per share figure at which it slumped from when it released reports of its failed studies of fexapotide triflutate in November of last year. Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ:NYMX) posted earnings per share of $0.04 for the quarterly period ended March 31, 2015, showing an improvement over the same quarter last year when it reported a loss per share of $0.07.
In terms of the smart money tracked by Insider Monkey, there wasn’t a lot of interest in Nymox during the first quarter of the year. Only two funds in our database had positions in the company, unchanged from the end of the fourth quarter of 2014. Their combined investment totaled just $28,000.
Why are we interested in the 13F filings of a select group of hedge funds? We use these filings to determine the top 15 small-cap stocks held by these elite funds based on 16 years of research that showed their top small-cap picks are much more profitable than both their large-cap stocks and the broader market as a whole; yet investors have been stuck (until now) investing in all of a hedge fund’s stocks: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Why pay fees to invest in both the best and worst ideas of a particular hedge fund when you can simply mimic the best ideas of the best fund managers on your own? These top small-cap stocks beat the S&P 500 Total Return Index by an average of nearly one percentage point per month in our backtests, which were conducted over the period of 1999 to 2012. Even better, since the beginning of forward testing at the end of August 2012, the strategy worked just as our research predicted and then some, outperforming the market every year and returning 123% over the last 34 months, which is more than 67 percentage points higher than the returns of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (see more details).
At Insider Monkey, we also track transactions made by company insiders in their company’s stocks, to gauge their level of belief in their firm’s development. In the case of Nymox, there has been no recorded insider activity this year.
With that in mind let’s take a look at the limited hedge fund activity relating to Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ:NYMX). Since it is a nano-cap company, it doesn’t enjoy a lot of popularity among larger investors. Among the funds we track, Ken Griffin‘s Citadel Investment Group emerged as the biggest shareholder with a total of 32,075 shares valued at $27,000. The fund cut its position in the stock by 4,300 shares during the first quarter. Clearbridge Investments, LLC, on the other hand, held 1,000 shares worth $1,000, unchanged from three months earlier.
Today’s announcement relating to the company’s studies of fexapotide triflutate for BPH puts it on a good path for growth, with a potential source of revenue in the near future. The success of the Phase 3 studies has made Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ:NYMX) a good investment for long term investors.
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