DURECT Co. (NASDAQ:DRRX) Short Interest Up 15.7% in June

DURECT Co. (NASDAQ:DRRX) was the target of a large increase in short interest in the month of June. As of June 30th, there was short interest totalling 1,180,000 shares, an increase of 15.7% from the June 15th total of 1,020,000 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 163,900 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 7.2 days. Currently, 4.1% of the company’s shares are sold short.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On DURECT

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Richmond Brothers Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of DURECT during the 4th quarter worth about $306,000. Silverberg Bernstein Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of DURECT during the 4th quarter worth about $28,000. Gagnon Securities LLC raised its position in shares of DURECT by 6.0% during the 1st quarter. Gagnon Securities LLC now owns 380,131 shares of the specialty pharmaceutical company’s stock worth $460,000 after acquiring an additional 21,425 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Tocqueville Asset Management L.P. increased its position in DURECT by 10.8% during the first quarter. Tocqueville Asset Management L.P. now owns 256,220 shares of the specialty pharmaceutical company’s stock worth $310,000 after buying an additional 25,000 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 28.03% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have recently weighed in on DRRX. StockNews.com upgraded DURECT from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 22nd. HC Wainwright restated a “neutral” rating on shares of DURECT in a report on Wednesday, May 22nd. Finally, Oppenheimer reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and issued a $5.00 price target on shares of DURECT in a research report on Monday, April 1st. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, DURECT has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $27.50.

DURECT Stock Performance

DRRX stock traded up $0.10 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, reaching $1.46. The company had a trading volume of 43,026 shares, compared to its average volume of 179,358. The company has a market capitalization of $45.16 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -1.43 and a beta of 1.04. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $1.35 and a 200 day simple moving average of $1.07. DURECT has a fifty-two week low of $0.47 and a fifty-two week high of $5.04.

DURECT (NASDAQ:DRRX) last issued its earnings results on Monday, May 13th. The specialty pharmaceutical company reported ($0.25) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.21) by ($0.04). DURECT had a negative return on equity of 328.25% and a negative net margin of 279.77%. The business had revenue of $1.83 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.73 million. As a group, analysts predict that DURECT will post -0.85 earnings per share for the current year.

About DURECT

DURECT Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company, develops medicines based on its epigenetic regulator program. The company's lead product larsucosterol (DUR-928), an endogenous, orally bioavailable small molecule that is in Phase IIb clinical trial to play a regulatory role in lipid metabolism, stress and inflammatory responses, and cell death and survival to treat alcohol-associated hepatitis, as well as completed Phase Ib clinical trial to treat patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.