This Stock was up more than 100 Percent Monday

It’s not every day that a stock moves more than 100 percent in a single trading session but one biopharma name printed a double by the end of the trading day Monday.

Clovis Oncology CLVS was up 102 percent following its announcement of some favorable clinical data.

First, its drug, Rucaparib, a treatment aimed at ovarian cancer showed a clinical benefit in 89 percent of patients. 37 patients were part of the trial including 10 with ovarian tumors, 21 with breast tumors, and six others.

The drug is in Phase I testing but because the results were so encouraging, the company plans to start Phase II trials before the end of the year.

Second, the company report that its drug, CO-1686 showed a response for non-small cell lung cancer. These patients have a mutation that makes the disease resistant to other treatments.

In a statement, Clovis CEO Patrick Mahaffy said, “There are no approved treatment options for patients with non-small cell lung cancer who have developed the T790M resistance mutation. We are extremely encouraged by these initial results.”

This is certainly exciting news for cancer sufferers but does Monday’s information make the stock a buy? Clovis specializes in cancer research and, to date, has no products on the market. Yesterday’s announcement may speed up the process of bringing Rucaparib to market but this $2 billion company is not profitable with an EPS -2.73 and about $129 million in cash.

Although it has a short interest of 13.5 percent, it has been a favorite of biopharma investors since it announced on March 1^st that Rucaparib could be indicated for 40 to 50 percent of cancer patients instead of what was thought to be only 15 percent.

Since that time, the stock is up 250 percent including yesterday’s move. Still, Clovis trades an average of 203,000 shares daily and only a handful of analysts cover it. Their mean price target is $45.25.

After the market close on Monday, some biopharma investors came out saying that yesterday’s move was overdone given the fact that it was already known that Rucaparib showed promise. Nobody disputes that a big gain based on the company’s press release was warranted but the outsized move may spark profit-taking in the short term.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Tim Parker had no position in the equities mentioned.