When a company plans a $458 million facility in Greensboro that will create 330 new jobs – as biomedical company ProKidney Corp. is doing – that would seem to be a very promising sign of good things to come. However, ever since the company purchased a building and property in Greensboro in July, the company’s stock has been in sharp decline.
ProKidney stock was trading at over $13 a share on August 1 of this year, soon after it bought the 210,000 square-foot building in Greensboro as well as 22 acres of surrounding land. On Friday, Sept. 22, the stock was under $5 a share – meaning the company had lost roughly two-thirds of its value in less than two months.
ProKidney is a publicly traded company based out of Winston-Salem that’s been developing new treatments for kidney disease – especially for late-stages of the disease. ProKidney describes itself as a clinical-stage biotechnology company with “a transformative proprietary cell therapy platform with the potential for treating Chronic Kidney Disease using a patient’s own cells.”
The company states its goal is “to redefine the treatment of Chronic Kidney Disease” away from managing kidney failure, to the “restoration or improvement of kidney function to stop or delay progression of CKD.”
The company’s main product – known as REACT – is designed to improve kidney function. ProKidney has announced that it plans to invest heavily in the newly purchased Greensboro facility through 2028 in order to manufacture REACT.
The company paid $25.5 million in cash for the building and property.
Wall Street publications reported some of the stock drop last week was likely fallout after a Security and Exchange Commission filing revealed one partial owner of the company had sold a large number of shares.
Stock market prices sometimes merely reflect baseless fears and a stock drop doesn’t always represent weakness in a business itself. However, city, county and state leaders would certainly like to see stocks of local and North Carolina companies headed in the upward direction. The market cap increases make it easier to expand the business and create jobs as well as grow the company’s footprint on the tax base and generate more property tax revenue.
Earlier this year, the City of Greensboro, Guilford County and the State of North Carolina approved incentives packages worth up to $34 million for the company. ProKidney even received up to $1.9 million in energy credits from Duke Energy as part of the deal.
All those incentives are conditional. They are based on the company meeting various milestones such as the creation of at least 330 new jobs on or before December 31, 2028, and a project investment of approximately $458 million by the company by the last day of 2027.
Do you believe they would make such an investment based on were the stock price was? You have to be kidding me!
Crow some more big city. Boom will be next. 54 and counting.
Wake up big city….kind of smells. Do your homework before you believe a press review.
Anytime there is a big insider sale of stock, never a good sign.
The stock price is down is because there are many more sellers than buyers. Sellers are paying lower buy prices just to get out. There has to be a reason for that.
For one thing, the company has never made a profit. Buyers were speculating on a killing, which ain’t happened.