NEW YORK, May 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, reminds investors that class actions have been commenced on behalf of stockholders of Malibu Boats, Inc. (NASDAQ: MBUU), and Altimmune, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALT). Stockholders have until the deadlines below to petition the court to serve as lead plaintiff. Additional information about each case can be found at the link provided.
Malibu Boats, Inc. (NASDAQ: MBUU)
Class Period: November 4, 2022 – April 11, 2024
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: June 28, 2024
On February 20, 2024, before the market opened, Malibu Boats announced the Company’s Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) had “mutually agreed” to cease to serve as CEO.
On this news, the Company’s stock price fell $4.33 or 9.1%, to close at $43.15 per share on February 20, 2024, on unusually heavy trading volume.
Then, on April 11, 2024, after the market closed, Malibu Boats revealed that Tommy’s Boats (“Tommy’s”) had filed a complaint against the Company. After the Company disclosed news of the lawsuit, various media outlets publicized the Complaint, which alleged the Company “engaged in an elaborate scheme” to “pump nearly $100 million” worth of inventory into Tommy dealerships since late 2022 to “artificially inflate Malibu’s sales performance.” According to the Complaint, Malibu Boats forced the Company’s highest priced, highest margin, slow moving “Malibu” branded inventory (as opposed to the lower-margin, but faster moving “Axis” brand) onto Tommy’s dealerships. Malibu Boats recognizes a sale when the dealer takes delivery of the boat, regardless of whether it has been sold to the end user. As a result, this scheme enabled the Company to represent that it experienced strong wholesale demand and sales, even as sales to the end user declined. The Complaint revealed that, approximately one week prior to the Company announcing the separation with Defendant Springer, certain “Malibu stakeholders” admitted to the principal of Tommy’s dealerships that Malibu was in fact “intentionally pumping Tommy’s full of inventory.” The Complaint further alleged the Company withheld payment of incentives from Tommy’s for nearly two years before suddenly cutting ties with Tommy’s.
On this news, the Company’s stock price fell $3.34, or 7.99%, to close at $38.48 per share on April 12, 2024, on unusually heavy trading volume. The Company’s common stock price continued to fall the next consecutive trading session, falling $2.34 or 6% to close at $36.14 per share on April 15, on unusually heavy trading volume.
The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that Malibu Boats engaged in an “elaborate scheme to over manufacture and pump nearly $100 million of its highest priced, highest margin, slow moving boat inventory into fifteen Tommy’s dealerships”; (2) that, as a result, the Company artificially inflated Malibu’s sales performance, market share, and stock value; (3) that the Company was withholding certain incentives and rebates from its dealers; (4) that, as a result of the foregoing, the Company faced substantial risk of litigation from one of its top dealers, Tommy’s; (5) that the Company’s CEO departed due to this role in this scheme; and (6) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants’ positive statements about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.
For more information on the Malibu Boats class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/MBUU
Altimmune, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALT)
Class Period: December 1, 2023 – April 26, 2024
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: July 5, 2024
Altimmune is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that focuses on developing treatments for obesity and liver diseases. The Company’s lead product candidate is pemvidutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (“GLP-1”) agonist for the treatment of obesity and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (“MASH”). GLP-1 agonists are medications that help lower blood sugar levels and promote weight loss.
On November 30, 2023, Altimmune announced topline results from its 48-week MOMENTUM Phase 2 trial evaluating pemvidutide for the treatment of obesity (the “MOMENTUM Trial”). According to the Company, at week 48, subjects receiving pemvidutide achieved mean weight losses of 10.3%, 11.2%, 15.6% and 2.2% at the 1.2 mg, 1.8 mg, and 2.4 mg doses and placebo, respectively, with a near-linear trajectory of continued weight loss observed on the 2.4 mg dose at the end of treatment. Defendants touted the significance of these results to pemvidutide’s clinical and commercial prospects as they purportedly evidenced the drug’s viability to compete with other GLP-1 agonists targeting weight-loss. Pemvidutide’s ability to compete with other GLP-1 agonists targeting weight-loss was particularly important to analysts and investors given the Company’s need to establish a strategic partnership with, or otherwise be acquired by, more established biopharmaceutical companies with the cash and capital needed to ensure funding for the drug’s future.
The Complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Altimmune overstated the potential for pemvidutide to stand out from competing GLP-1 agonists based on the drug’s efficacy and tolerability results observed in the MOMENTUM Trial; (ii) accordingly, the MOMENTUM Trial results were less significant to pemvidutide’s clinical, commercial, and competitive prospects than Defendants had led investors to believe; (iii) as a result of all the foregoing, Defendants had overstated Altimmune’s prospects for finding a strategic partner to develop pemvidutide; and (iv) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
On February 13, 2024, Kerrisdale Capital published a report (the “Kerrisdale Report”) alleging that “a deeper examination of Altimmune’s data reveals a drug with little chance of competing against either the approved incumbents or the other GLP-1 agonists progressing through clinical trials.” In particular, the Kerrisdale Report found that “[e]ven if pemvidutide did result in 15.6% weight-loss, that’s not good enough” because competing, already approved GLP-1 agonists “semaglutide and tirzepatide (Ozempic and Mounjaro) have demonstrated superior weight-loss on a comparable basis, with the added benefit of controlling blood-sugar (which pemvidutide does not),” while noting that “pemvidutide’s tolerability is atrocious” compared to these same drugs. (Emphasis in original.) Accordingly, the Kerrisdale Report concluded that “[w]e don’t think legitimate prospective partners want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and years of trials pursuing an obvious dead end.”
On this news, Altimmune’s stock price fell $1.94 per share, or 18.65%, to close at $8.46 per share on February 13, 2024.
Then, on April 29, 2024, Bloomberg published an article entitled “Altimmune Down as Guggenheim Sees Overhang in No Partnership,” reporting that “Guggenheim Securities downgraded [Altimmune’s] stock to neutral from buy saying [a] partnership for the biotech’s lead asset pemvidutide look[s] ‘increasingly unlikely’.” In particular, Guggenheim Securities stated that the opportunity to successfully fund pemvidutide’s future as a treatment for obesity through a strategic partnership was “growing increasingly tenuous” and that “[t]he failure of a partner to emerge now five months from the end of Ph[ase] 2 presents an overhang that can no longer be ignored” as “a major partnership or M&A event would have materialized already if pem[vidutide] was viewed as a serious competitor in the growing obesity/ NASH landscapes by potential strategics or investors[.]”
On this news, Altimmune’s stock price fell $0.87 per share, or 11.98%, to close at $6.39 per share on April 29, 2024.
For more information on the Altimmune class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/ALT
About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.
Contact Information:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.
Brandon Walker, Esq.
Marion Passmore, Esq.
(212) 355-4648
investigations@bespc.com
www.bespc.com
