South San Francisco, May 23, 2026, 08:02 PDT
- ORIC ended Friday at $8.32. That’s higher than the $7.93 close Monday, but shares finished lower on the session.
- Nasdaq is closed over the weekend and will not open Monday because of Memorial Day.
- No new company events are on the calendar for investors, so attention stays on ORIC’s planned Phase 3 prostate-cancer trial.
ORIC Pharmaceuticals shares picked up some ground this week, though the stock is still hanging near the trial-risk levels seen after its prostate cancer update in the spring. U.S. markets now go into a three-day break.
Shares on the Nasdaq ended Friday at $8.32, off 1.7% from Thursday’s $8.46. The stock traded as high as $8.70 earlier in the day. But for the week, ORIC was still up about 5% from Monday’s $7.93 finish, according to LSEG data on ORIC’s investor site.
This time, the normal Monday trading break isn’t happening. Nasdaq shows Memorial Day, May 25, on its market holiday calendar. Regular U.S. stock-market hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern, Nasdaq says.
Few big events on the calendar for the week, so most eyes will be on updates from ORIC. The company has nothing new on its investor events page. Traders are waiting for word that the Phase 3 Himalayas-1 trial is underway. Phase 3 is often the final step before a regulatory filing.
ORIC is running trials on rinzimetostat, a PRC2 inhibitor. The PRC2 complex helps control genes. The company is aiming the drug at metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, which is cancer that keeps progressing even after hormone therapy.
ORIC said in its May 4 update that it picked a 400 mg once-daily dose of rinzimetostat with darolutamide for the Himalayas-1 trial, which is set to begin in the first half of 2026. The company said it expects to share a rinzimetostat program update and provide several enozertinib clinical updates in the second half of 2026.
ORIC’s president and CEO Jacob M. Chacko described the first quarter as a “pivotal step” and said the company now sees a “clear path” to becoming a multi-asset, late-stage oncology company. He also gave the standard biotech warning: the path depends on how trials go, not just on early data.
ORIC is leaning on its cash balance to keep the program going. The company said it had $419.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments at March 31, enough to fund operations into the second half of 2028. For the first quarter, ORIC posted a net loss of $35.8 million and an accumulated deficit of $728.0 million.
Pfizer still sets the competitive bar for ORIC. Wedbush’s David Nierengarten lowered his ORIC price target to $17 from $20 after March’s prostate-cancer update but left his Outperform call unchanged. He said ORIC’s Phase 1 data looked in line with Pfizer’s mevrometostat, although ORIC’s trial had sicker patients. Nierengarten said rinzimetostat seemed safer than Pfizer’s drug and called “a tolerability advantage… clinically meaningful.” TipRanks
ORIC is making safety its main selling point. Fierce Biotech says Pfizer leads the PRC2 field with mevrometostat. But ORIC is betting that having less toxicity and fewer changes to treatment could give it an opening. CEO Chacko told investors that rinzimetostat’s safety “looks markedly better.”
ORIC is still without product sales and keeps burning cash. Its own filing says timing for trials, safety, efficacy, and funding could all miss targets. Delays to Himalayas-1, better competing data from Pfizer, or an early need to raise money could see the shares lose last week’s gains fast.
