Australia's Opthea slumps most in over 4 years on discounted placement

Opthea

14/06/2024 04:41

** Shares of Australia's Opthea  OPT.AX  fall as much as
23.7% to A$0.370, marking their worst intraday drop since March
2020
    ** OPT, a biopharmaceutical firm focused on drugs for
retinal diseases, trading at its lowest level since late
November 2023
    ** Stock is top loser in the ASX All Ordinaries index
 .AORD 
    ** Stock falls on resuming trading after announcing
placement to raise up to about A$227.3 mln ($150.88 mln)
    ** Co says it raised about A$171.5 mln via entitlement offer
at A$0.40 per share - a discount of 10.5% to close on June 6,
after which shares went on a halt
    ** Adds retail entitlement offer to raise about A$55.9 mln
will open on June 19
    ** More than 3 mln shares change hands, vs the 30-day
average of nearly a million shares
    ** Down 14.9% so far this year, as of last close

    ($1 = 1.5065 Australian dollars)

 (Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru)
 ((Sameer.Manekar@thomsonreuters.com; Twitter: https://twitter.com/sameer_manekar))