Avadel (AVDL) Soars To New High, What Next?

(RTTNews) - Shares of Avadel Pharmaceuticals plc (AVDL) soared as much as 32 percent today, following a $65 million private placement with institutional accredited investors led by Vivo Capital, Avoro Capital Advisors, RTW Investments, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Acuta Capital, and KVP Capital.

As part of the private placement, the Company will issue 8.68 million American Depositary Shares and 487,614 shares of Series A Preferred at a price of $7.09 per share. The closing of the private placement is expected to occur on February 25, 2020.

We alerted readers to Avadel on November 25, 2019, when it was trading around $6.

On December 16, 2019, the FDA approved Nouress (AV001), a cysteine hydrochloride injection, a critical drug for treating neonatal patients requiring total parenteral nutrition.

The Company's lead investigational drug is FT218, a once-nightly formulation of sodium oxybate, for the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) and cataplexy in patients suffering from narcolepsy. A phase III clinical trial of FT218, dubbed REST-ON, is underway. Topline data from this study is expected in Q2, 2020.

If approved, FT218 will compete with Jazz Pharma's (JAZZ) Xyrem (sodium oxybate), which has a twice nightly dosing. Xyrem had sales of $1.4 billion in 2018.

Avadel is slated to report financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year ended December 31, 2019, in the first week of March. Revenue is expected to be at or above $55 million. The annual revenue in 2018 was $103.3 million. The decline is primarily attributed to lower net selling prices across the Company's hospital products as a result of increased market competition.

AVDL touched a new 52-week high of $9.45 in early trading today. As of this writing, the stock is up 26.40% at $9.01.