GenomeWeb Top 40 Falls 3 Percent in December Amid Mixed Broader Market

Editor’s Note: We will adjust the firms listed in the GenomeWeb Top 40 this month based on market caps at the end of 2024. Those changes will be reflected next month when we report on the stock performance in January of the companies we track.

NEW YORK – Stocks of omics and molecular diagnostics companies fell in December, dropping 3 percent amid a mixed broader market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5 percent while the Nasdaq rose by less than 1 percent, and the Nasdaq Biotech Index dropped 7 percent. Of the 40 firms tracked by GenomeWeb, 12 saw their stock prices rise month over month and 28 saw their shares fall in value.

Protein sequencing firm Quantum-Si led the winners in December, as its shares more than doubled, closing the month at $2.70 after closing the prior month at $1.25. Quantum-Si also led the Top 40 in November with its shares rising 79 percent month over month following an investor day presentation in which it detailed plans for a new platform called Proteus that the firm said could ultimately enable proteome-scale protein sequencing. The reason for the December price spike is less clear. The company's stock jumped over the Christmas holiday, closing at $1.30 on Dec. 24 and at $2.15 on Dec. 26. It jumped again the next day, closing at $3.60 on Dec. 27 before ending the month at $2.70. On Dec. 20, Quantum-Si announced it had submitted to BioRxiv a new paper detailing its ProteoVue software for detecting and quantifying single amino acid variants in proteins.

The company also announced during the month an agreement with Canaccord Genuity to sell up to $75 million of its Class A common stock through an at-the-market offering.

MDxHealth posted the second-largest gain in stock price in December with its shares up 19 percent month over month. The company did not release any news that appeared to drive the rise.

Ginkgo Bioworks posted the third-largest gain in December with its shares up 13 percent month over month. The company announced during the month that in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University it had won a subcontract of up to $9.4 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health's (ARPA-H) Resilient Extended Automatic Cell Therapies (REACT) program to develop bioelectronic cell-based devices aimed at diagnosing and treating hormone disorders.

Nautilus Biotechnology posted the largest decline in stock price in December with its shares down 25 percent month over month. The company did not report any news that appeared to drive the decline.

908 Devices posted the second-largest decline in December with shares down 20 percent month over month. The company announced during the month a collaboration with bioprocessing firm Getinge.

Myriad Genetics posted the third-largest decline during the month with shares down 16 percent. In December, investment bank UBS initiated coverage of Myriad stock with a neutral rating and a 12-month price target of $18. In a note to investors, UBS analyst Lu Li noted that Myriad's growth profile has improved over historical trends, though it remains lower than peers and sustained double-digit growth is "unlikely" in the medium term.