Wednesday's Small-Cap Winners & Losers

Vanda Pharmaceuticals (VNDA) surged 36.7% Wednesday after the Rockville, Md.-based company reported positive results in advanced-stage clinical trials of its insomnia treatment VEC-162. The drug, a balanced melatonin receptor agonist, showed "statistically significant improvement" in patients suffering from insomnia in two separate measures of sleep onset, as well as in sleep maintenance and in total sleep time.

The primary endpoint of the trial -- the amount of time needed to fall into a deep sleep -- improved by an average of 26.3 minutes over that of patients taking a placebo in one of the three dosages administered. The drug is meant for patients suffering from circadian rhythm sleep disorders -- those in which the individual's desired sleep time doesn't align with his/her internal clock. Vanda says the disorder affects millions of Americans, with particular prevalence in the 14% of the populace who are shift workers. Shares were trading up $3.58 to $13.34.

Daktronics (DAKT) soared on results that flew by Wall Street expectations. For the quarter ended Oct. 28 the display screen developer earned $8.9 million, or 22 cents a share, compared with $5.2 million, or 13 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were looking for earnings of 15 cents a share. Revenue was up 63% to $123.5 million, easily beating estimates of $98.4 million. Looking ahead, the Brookings, S.D.-based company expects third-quarter earnings to be between 12 cents to 18 cents a share and projects revenue of $103 million to $115 million. Shares were up $7, or 26.1%, to $33.62.