PreMarket Prep Stock Of The Day: Vuzix

Benzinga's PreMarket Prep airs every morning from 8-9 a.m. ET. During that fast-paced, highly informative hour, traders and investors tune in to get the major news of the day, the catalysts behind those moves and the corresponding price action for the upcoming session.

On any given day, the show will cover at least 20 stocks determined by co-hosts Joel Elconin and Dennis Dick along with producer Spencer Israel.

Last Thursday, Ark’s Cathie Wood purchased shares of Palantir Technologies PLTR and instigated a major rally in the issue on Friday.

It's more of the same in Monday’s session, as Wood adding to her stake in Vuzix Corp VUZI has the issue trading sharply higher.

The Company: Vuzix Corp is a supplier of smart glasses and augmented reality (AR) technologies and products for the consumer and enterprise markets. The company's products include personal display and wearable computing devices that offer users a portable high-quality viewing experience, provide solutions for mobility, wearable displays and augmented reality.

Gone Nowhere Until December: Even though Vuzix has traded as a public company since April 2010, it had gone nowhere until last December. After ending November at $4.35, it nearly doubled in December to $9.08 on the heels of its primary product (smart glasses) securing orders with several different companies.

Continued collaboration with Hippo Technologies helped the company get into the medical/surgical field. As a result, the issue rallied to $16.94 in January and backed off to end the month at $11.05.

Rally Continues In February: After already adding $2 to $13.35 by Feb. 11, the company had one of its best performances on Feb. 12, rallying to $16.95. The catalyst being the company announcement of a strategic partnership with Rods & Cones, a provider of a fully virtual surgical-collaboration platform. Rods & Cones will add the M-Series smart glasses as an additional video capturing device to support optimized remote interactions between surgeons and experts.

Here Comes Cathie: Vuzix added just under a dollar in last week's trading, making a new all-time high on Wednesday and an all-time closing high on Friday at $17.73. After the close in her daily trading update, Wood revealed the purchase of 292,000 shares of the issue during Friday’s session.

Following a much higher open today, it had a brief retreat to $19.56 and blasted to $24.44. As of 2:30 p.m. ET, profit-takes have come into the issue nudging it back into the mid-$22 area.

Moving Forward: Monday’s price action has left a void in price from the top of Friday’s range ($17.95) to the current low of $19.56. It would not be uncommon for the issue to come back down to that area, then consolidate and resume its relentless rally in 2021.

As always, improvement on the issue’s all-time closing high price may be a good benchmark to follow to determine if larger players may be attempting to exit the issue.

The Vuzix M300. Courtesy photo.