Sprint, CombinatoRx: Early Volume Plays

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Several stocks trading under $5 were poised to move on above-average volume during Monday's session.

Nabi Biopharmaceuticals (NABI Quote) surged by $1.19, or 33.4%, to $4.75 in the premarket session after the company and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK Quote) announced a global option and licensing agreement for NicVAX, an investigational vaccine for the treatment of nicotine addiction and the prevention of smoking relapse, as well as for the development of a second generation nicotine vaccine. The 50-day average daily volume for Nabi is 179,000, according to the Nasdaq.

Netlist (NLST Quote) jumped by 53 cents, or 11.9%, to $5 in the premarket session ahead of the Supercomputing 2009 conference in Portland, Oregon, where the company will introduce HyperCloud, the first 16-gigabyte, 2 vRank memory module for computer servers. The 50-day average daily volume for Netlist is 368,000, according to the Nasdaq.

China Advanced Construction Materials Group (CADC Quote) dropped by $1.51, or 23.2%, to $5 in the premarket session after the company posted fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings of 18 cents a share, although including a change in fair value of warrants, it would have lost 44 cents a share. Additionally, the company said it burned through $1.44 million in cash during the quarter. The three-month average daily volume for China Advanced is 19,000, according to Yahoo! Finance.

Sprint Nextel (S Quote) rose by 26 cents, or 8.4%, to $3.36 in the premarket session after Credit Suisse upgraded the company's stock to outperform from neutral. The firm also raised its stock price target to $6 from $4 and added it to the U.S Focus List. The move comes as Credit Suisse said risks are mostly past the company, and that margin trends and subscriber numbers should improve in 2010. The three-month average daily volume for Sprint is 55.5 million, according to Yahoo! Finance.

CombinatoRx (CRXX Quote) plummeted by 73 cents, or 44.8%, to 90 cents in the premarket session after the company and privately-held Neuromed Pharmaceuticals said the Food and Drug Administration indicated that a new drug application in its current form would not be sufficient to form the basis for approval of Exalgo, a treatment for moderate to severe pain in opioid tolerant patients. The 50-day average daily volume for CombinatoRx is 842,000, according to the Nasdaq.

Spherix (SPEX Quote) jumped by $1.39, or 69.5%, to $3.39 in the premarket session after the company announced "positive interim results" in Phase 3 trial of its Naturlose treatment for Type 2 Diabetes. Spherix said it remains on target to complete the late-stage trial and submit a new drug application next year. The 50-day average daily volume for Spherix is 53,000, according to the Nasdaq.

-- Written by Robert Holmes in New York.

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