Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. (AKBA), a biopharmaceutical company yesterday announced that they have extended their collaboration with Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. and will now develop and commercialise Vadadustat in Europe China and other territories.

Vadadustat is used to treat anemia patients with chronic kidney disease and is currently in late stage clinical trials.

Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. CEO’s Comments

“We are very pleased to expand our strategic relationship with Otsuka, a company who shares our vision to improve the lives of patients with kidney disease,” stated John P. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer of Akebia. “We now have a single, strong collaborator for the two largest markets, the U.S. and Europe. This simplifies governance and decision making, maximising the efficiency of our global Phase 3 development programme and ultimately the commercialisation of vadadustat. We are able to accomplish this while obtaining substantial funding for our vadadustat development programme and retaining significant long-term value for Akebia.”  Business Wire

AKBA Technical Analysis

(Click on image to enlarge)

Akebia Therapeutics Chart

AKBA opened trading yesterday at $9.38 which was up from the previous day’s trading close of $9.31. Shares closed trading yesterday at $9.37 and spiked up after market to $12.25, equivalent to a 31% increase from the closing price. Taking a look at the daily chart we can see that the last time AKBA traded above these levels we have to go back to the week of January 4th, 2016 when it traded at $12.56.

Taking a closer look at the daily chart we can see that before the spike up AKBA had been in an overall downward trend dating back to March 6th when it traded at $10.25. AKBA has a float of 14.52 million shares and traded below the normal daily trading volume on Tuesday. It’s higher priced than the penny stocks I normally like to trade but it still has plenty of upside with such a small float.

For trading purposes, I would like to see AKBA open trading on Wednesday above $11.30 and if it does I would be looking to take a long position at the bell. Another entry would be to place a limit order to buy at the VWAP. My stop loss would be $0.15 from my entry position fearing anything more than that and the stock would start to fill in the gap up.