New York, May 20, 2026, 06:12 (EDT)
InMed Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares slipped in early Nasdaq pre-market trading on Wednesday, giving back part of a surge sparked by its all-stock merger agreement with privately held Mentari Therapeutics and a planned $290 million financing.
At 6:07 a.m. EDT, InMed traded at $1.37, down 14.4% from Tuesday’s close. The stock had finished Tuesday at $1.60, up 135.1%, with volume of 93.1 million shares, after a previous close of $0.681.
Regular trading had not opened at the dateline time. Nasdaq says its pre-market session runs from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Eastern time and regular trading from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; May 20 is not listed as a 2026 market closure, while Memorial Day on May 25 is.
Why it matters now is ownership. InMed is not being bought for cash. Its public listing would be used to bring Mentari’s migraine pipeline to Nasdaq, and pre-merger InMed shareholders are expected to own about 1.51% of the combined company.
The combined company is expected to operate as Mentari Therapeutics and trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under a new ticker. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to shareholder approvals, effectiveness of an SEC registration statement, Nasdaq listing approval and other conditions.
The financing is the stronger part of the pitch. Mentari’s private placement — a sale of securities to selected investors rather than the public — is expected to bring in about $290 million and fund operations through 2028, beyond expected clinical data readouts from its lead migraine programs.
Eric A. Adams, InMed’s president and CEO, told investors the deal followed a review of strategic alternatives and represented the “highest potential value creation opportunity” for InMed shareholders. Julianne Bruno, chair of Mentari, said the transaction gives Mentari capital and public-market infrastructure to compete in migraine prevention.
There was another moving piece. InMed separately said it amended preferred investment options held by Armistice Capital Master Fund, cutting the exercise price to $0.80 from $16.60 for up to 278,761 common shares. The company said there was no assurance the options would be exercised.
The merger also comes after a tight liquidity stretch. InMed reported a $3.0 million net loss for the quarter ended March 31 and said cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were $5.2 million at quarter-end, down from $10.8 million at June 30, 2025. Its latest quarterly filing said there was substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern within one year.
Mentari is aiming at a crowded but large migraine market. Its programs target PACAP, short for pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide, and CGRP, calcitonin gene-related peptide, both proteins tied to migraine biology. The clearest public-market peers are Eli Lilly and Teva, whose competing migraine drugs Emgality and Ajovy were the subject of a revived patent dispute last month, underscoring the value and pressure in the field.
Late Tuesday, law firm Brodsky & Smith said it was investigating possible claims against InMed’s board over the transaction, including whether the process was fair and whether the proposed transaction pays fair value to shareholders. The release did not say a lawsuit had been filed.
The broader tape was not helping risk appetite, though InMed’s move was clearly company-specific. The Nasdaq Composite, an index tracking thousands of Nasdaq-listed shares, fell 0.8% on Tuesday to 25,870.71 as major U.S. indexes retreated.
But the trade still has several ways to go wrong. Shareholders could reject the merger, the private placement might not close as expected, Nasdaq or SEC-related conditions could delay the deal, and Mentari’s drug candidates still face clinical and regulatory risk. Existing InMed holders also face a small pro forma ownership stake, with any extra value tied partly to a contingent value right, a contract that may pay only if legacy InMed assets produce proceeds.
The next hard markers are procedural, not clinical: the Form S-4 filing, shareholder meeting dates, financing updates and any disclosure on InMed’s legacy assets. Until then, the stock is trading less like a conventional biotech earnings story and more like a merger-spread and dilution story, with a very small float doing the rest.
