Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Qurate Retail Gains On Upbeat Earnings; ASLAN Pharmaceuticals Shares Slide

Toward the end of trading Monday, the Dow traded up 0.04% to 27691.15 while the NASDAQ fell 0.13% to 8,464.30. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.19% to 3,087.15.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Real estate shares climbed 0.4% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Cedar Realty Trust, Inc. CDR, up 5%, and Transcontinental Realty Investors, Inc. TCI, up 3%.

In trading on Monday, utilities shares fell 0.6%.

Top Headline

SunPower Corporation SPWR announced it plans to separate into two independent publicly-traded companies: SunPower and Maxeon Solar Technologies.

Maxeon Solar will be the manufacturer and marketer of premium solar panels. Concurrent with the transaction, an equity investment of $298 million will be made in Maxeon Solar by long-time partner Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor Co., Ltd.

Equities Trading UP

Carbonite, Inc. CARB shares shot up 25% to $22.93 after the company announced it would be acquired by OpenText for $23 per share in cash.

Shares of TransEnterix, Inc. TRXC got a boost, shooting up 18% to $0.2670 after the company announced that Anthony Fernando was appointed as the new President and CEO.

Qurate Retail, Inc.. QRTEA shares were also up, gaining 10% to $10.35 after the company reported better-than-expected Q3 EPS results.

Equities Trading DOWN

Lipocine Inc. LPCN shares tumbled 72% to $0.7634 after an adverse FDA verdict on its lead drug Tlando, previously known as LPCN 1021. Lipocine said Monday the FDA said "nay" for the third time for its Tlando, an oral testosterone replacement therapy for use in adult males for treating conditions associated with hypogonadism, which is a deficiency of endogenous testosterone. The complete response letter, or CRL, issued by the FDA signaling the application cannot be approved in the present form, pointed to one deficiency — the efficacy trial not meeting the three secondary endpoints for maximal testosterone concentration. The CRL, however, did not identify issues related to chemistry, manufacturing and controls.

Shares of ASLAN Pharmaceuticals Limited ASLN were down 64% to $0.7450 following a clinical readout from the company. Aslan, which went public in May 2018, said its varlitinib, codenamed ASLAN001, failed in a pivotal study dubbed TreeTopp that evaluated the asset for biliary tract cancer. The multinational study evaluated 127 patientswho failed first-line therapy. Topline data showed that varlitinib did not meet the co-primary endpoints of progression-free survival, or PFS, and overall response rate, or ORR, as assessed by ICR according to RECIST.

NextCure, Inc. NXTC was down, falling 52% to $39.84 after the company announced a 44% patient discontinuation rate in its NC318 Phase 1/2 clinical trial.

Commodities


In commodity news, oil traded down 0.7% to $56.87, while gold traded down 0.4% to $1,457.80
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Silver traded down 0.1% Monday to $16.82, while copper fell 0.7% to $2.664.

Euro zone


European shares closed mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.02%, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.06%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index declined 0.19%. Meanwhile, the German DAX dropped 0.23%, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.07% while UK shares fell 0.42%.

Economics

On the economics calendar Monday, there is no important data due out.