Trading in Firm Hunting a Virus Vaccine Dwarfs GE and Apple Combined

(Bloomberg) -- Investors are flipping shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. more quickly than any other publicly-traded stock on Wednesday as retail investor enthusiasm grows surrounding the company’s hunt for a coronavirus vaccine.

As of 10:54 a.m. in New York, more than 82 million shares of the Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania-based company had been traded, with call options that expire later this month being active as well. The company’s trading volume is more than double any other company and is higher than General Electric Co., Apple Inc., Ford Motor Co., and Microsoft Corp. combined, although the dollar value of shares traded in the larger companies still dwarfs Inovio.

The biotech has continued to take Wall Street by storm as it looks to advance a vaccine candidate to combat Covid-19, with its shares having more than doubled in the past three sessions. On Monday at a meeting at the White House, the company’s chief executive said it will start trials for the vaccine in April with a plan to deliver one million doses by the end of the year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bailey Lipschultz in New York at blipschultz@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Scott Schnipper

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