Check Scynexis (SCYX) for Significant Near-term Catalysts – and Big-Time Insider Buying

Scynexis’ broad-spectrum antifungal offers blockbuster potential, while the CEO’s major purchase signals shareholder confidence

Few events offer truer insight into executive-level sentiment like insider buying activity. After all, there’s an old saying in the markets: corporate insiders sell their company’s stock for many reasons, but they only buy when they expect the share price to go up.

There’s another old saying – put your money where your mouth is – and that’s precisely what Scynexis (SCYX) CEO, President, and Director Marco Taglietti is doing. We’ll delve into the details of the CEO’s big-ticket purchase, but suffice it to say that it’s a real confidence booster.

Of course, I would never recommend a stock solely based on insider buying activity. Every stock represents a business enterprise, and in the biotechnology sector it’s particularly important to closely examine the company’s clinical pipeline.

Thankfully, Scynexis is a worthy addition to your biotech holdings based on the company’s own merits, even beyond the large-scale corporate-insider purchase of SCYX stock.

A Closer Look at SCYX Stock

It’s heartening to see that SCYX stock performed quite well during the final two months of 2020. The bulls really needed a shot in the arm after the stock corrected from $6 to $4.37 in October.

It’s been said that the biggest rewards go to the most patient investors, and SCYX stock serves as a textbook example of this principle in action. After printing a short-term low at the end of October, the SCYX bulls really took the ball and ran with it.

By the end of November, they managed to push the share price up to $6.65. That wasn’t the end of the story, however, as SCYX stock touched $8 in mid-December. By the end of the year, SCYX settled at $7.65, thereby locking in a solid third-quarter gain.

The bulls will definitely want to maintain control of the price action in SCYX stock throughout 2021’s first quarter. Reclaiming the key $10 level from April would be a reasonable and perfectly attainable goal.

A Growing Public Health Threat

You might not be familiar with the fungus known as Candida auris (or C. auris), but its impact is widespread and sometimes tragic.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that Candida auris “has been causing severe illness in hospitalized patients. In some patients, this yeast can enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body, causing serious invasive infections.”

The CDC also states that Candida auris often doesn’t respond to commonly used antifungal drugs, thus making infections difficult to treat. This underreported health threat is known to be multi-drug resistant and indicates a shocking mortality rate of up to 60% in immune-compromised patients.

To make matters worse, Candida auris has been rapidly spreading in hospitals that are already overrun by Covid-19 infections. Yet, as seasoned biotech investors know, with every health crisis there’s an opportunity for solutions from the private sector.

In the case of Candida auris and the fungal infection crisis generally, Scynexis proposes the hard-to-pronounce but potentially groundbreaking Ibrexafungerp: an antifungal with the potential to treat vaginal yeast infections in the community as well as life-threatening, invasive fungal infections in hospitals and other health-care settings.

The CEO Takes a Stake

Scynexis holds a full 10 years of U.S. regulatory exclusivity for Ibrexafungerp, plus composition-of-matter patent rights up to 2035 with additional applications pending, for a total of roughly 15 years of exclusivity in the United States.

Looking ahead, SCYX stock could spike hard and fast at any moment due to any of a number of significant near-term catalysts:

• Two approvals expected in 2021-2022
• IV Phase 1 initiation and additional data readouts in Q1 2021 for the hospital-based program in refractory invasive fungal infections and Candida auris
• NDA supplement expected in H2 2021 for prevention of Vulvovaginal Candidiasis (VVC) recurrence
• Planned U.S. commercial launch in H2 2021 for treatment of VVC
• Estimated U.S. peak sales of $400-$600 million in VVC

Now, I promised to reveal the CEO’s big transaction, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. On December 28, it was revealed that Marco Taglietti bought a cool quarter-million dollars’ worth of his company’s stock shares.

With this transaction, Taglietti reportedly increased his holdings of SCYX stock by 57%. Is the CEO anticipating a major catalyst event in the near future? We can’t be sure of that, but at the very least, we can assume that he’s bullish on Ibrexafungerp, and on Scynexis.

The Bottom Line

As a grossly underreported health threat spreads, Scynexis offers a unique product with long-term patent protection and revenue potential in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Does this bode well for SCYX stock? Just ask Marco Taglietti, the CEO who voted with his dollars, not just his words, in favor of a treatment and a company that could literally end a crisis.