Benzinga Pro's Stock To Watch For Thurs., Mar. 26, 2020: Co-Diagnostics (CODX)

Benzinga Pro's Stocks To Watch For Thursday: Co-Diagnostics (CODX)

The company is a provider of reagents used for diagnostic tests and has been considered by traders one of the earliest plays on coronavirus testing. 

The company announced Jan. 23 the design of a test for the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, using its CoPrimer platform. Shares have rallied about 800% since this release at the end of January. 

The stock rallied nearly 10% on Wednesday as broader stocks were up about 1%. In pre-market action Thursday, shares were up another 7%.

The catalyst from Wednesday seemed to be a press release from investor relations company BDA which highlighted Mar. 18- and Mar. 23-dated H.C. Wainwright research notes reiterating a Buy rating and $20 price target.

The release Wednesday highlighted from the Mar. 18 note, "Co-Diagnostics has validated its Logix Smart COVID-19 test and submitted an EUA application to the FDA. We are aware that EUAs have thus far been issued to tests developed by Roche, Thermo Fisher, Hologic, LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics and Quidel, with the last two EUAs issued late yesterday. It seems the FDA continues to issue EUAs even though EUA is no longer required under the new guidance."

There did not appear to be any new information (compared to the original H.C. Wainwright notes) shared in the press release Wednesday.

It should be noted Co-Diagnostics shares were up about 1.8% on Mar. 18 when the first H.C. Wainwright note was published; shares were down about 9% on Mar. 23 when the second noted highlighted in Wednesday's release was published. 

Given the extreme sensitivity of this stock's price recently amid the coronavirus outbreak, it seems odd the stock wouldn't have moved on the two previous days when H.C. Wainwright published these notes.