NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 13:14 ET — Regular session
- Corcept Therapeutics shares drop about 9% in early afternoon trading
- SEC filings show top executives exercised stock options and withheld shares for taxes
- Investors focused on FDA’s relacorilant decision deadline due Tuesday
Corcept Therapeutics Inc shares fell 8.9% to $72.72 in early afternoon Nasdaq trading on Tuesday, after touching a session low of $72.26. The stock was last down $7.10 from Monday’s close, with about 897,000 shares traded.
The decline comes as investors focus on Corcept on the day the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is due to decide on relacorilant, its experimental treatment for endogenous hypercortisolism, also known as Cushing’s syndrome.
Under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, the FDA sets a target date for taking action on a drug application. Corcept has said the agency set a Dec. 30, 2025 target action date for relacorilant, and Chief Executive Joseph Belanoff said in a March statement: “The FDA’s acceptance of our New Drug Application takes us another step closer to bringing relacorilant to patients with hypercortisolism.” HCPLive
Corcept’s move outpaced the broader biotech pullback. The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF slid 1.4% and the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF fell 1.2%, while the S&P 500-tracking SPY and tech-heavy QQQ were little changed.
A regulatory filing on Monday showed Belanoff exercised options for 550,000 Corcept shares at $3.88 on Dec. 24. The filing said 306,846 shares were withheld at $83.59 to cover taxes and the exercise price, and it also showed a transfer of 243,154 shares to a family trust without consideration.
A separate Form 4 showed Chief Business Officer Gary Charles Robb exercised options for 145,000 shares at $3.88 on the same date, with 80,284 shares withheld for taxes and costs. The filing said he held 78,626 shares directly after the transaction.
These “cashless” exercises let an executive convert stock options into shares without paying the full exercise price in cash. Companies typically withhold a portion of shares to cover taxes and costs.
Corcept already sells Korlym (mifepristone), which is approved to control high blood sugar caused by excess cortisol in certain adults with endogenous Cushing’s syndrome.
If approved, relacorilant would add to a small but competitive market for medical therapy in Cushing’s syndrome that includes Xeris Biopharma’s Recorlev and Isturisa (osilodrostat), both approved by the FDA for endogenous hypercortisolemia in adults.
Traders are watching for the FDA’s decision and any label details, which can determine how widely a drug can be prescribed. A complete response letter — the FDA’s notice that it will not approve an application in its current form — can force additional work before a resubmission.
The stock’s more than $8 intraday range highlights how event-driven trading can become when a biotech faces a hard regulatory deadline.
