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Market Pulse: is Prima worth $100 million?

Nick Evans
Monday, 5 October 2009

IF there's a bit of news out there that clearly indicates speculative stocks are into a full recovery, it may well be this – the market capitalisation of Prima Biomed, long the plaything of day traders, briefly topped $100 million last Thursday.

It's probably worth remembering that Prima, still one of the most speculative stocks in the life science sector, was trading at 0.7c this time last year. Last Thursday the company traded as high as 20c (and no, there was no capital reconstruction in the middle there) – a 28-fold increase.

The $100 million market capitalisation ($95.7 million at week's close) puts Prima into BTN's top 20 companies by market cap for the first time, according to the figures listed by IRESS. That means the market gives Prima Biomed higher value than companies such as Alchemia, IDT Australia, Bionomics, ImpediMed and a host of other former leading lights of the sector.

Prima dropped slightly towards the close of the week, finishing at 18c on Friday – up 5.5c (44%) for the week, on the exchange of 151.9 million shares and no particular news.

Prima was the biggest mover in the top 20 companies by market capitalisation, entering that listing with a bullet. Unilife Medical Solutions also made considerable gains, up 26% (+28.5c) to $1.38.

www.BioTechnologyNews.net