Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) Just Popped: What's Next?

Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) had a great close to the week last week. At end of play on Thursday, the company went for $1.13 a share. By Friday close, it'd risen to $1.28 and, premarket on Monday, activity has pushed this up a little further to $1.30. That's around 15% in a single session.While the run is clear to see on the charts, what's driving it is a little less obvious. We got word on Friday that Ekso had appointed Ted Wang to its Board of Directors, effective immediately, and this is a neat appointment (we will go into why shortly) but it's not a 15% revaluation input. EKSO Daily ChartInstead, we think the company is finally seeing some speculative volume on the back of an overarching reversal in market sentiment. This is a company that we have looked at on a number of occasions in the past, with the most recent being back in July. In that just linked to coverage, we outlined the one thing that we wanted to see from Ekso and, specifically, what we wanted to see the company do with the capital it had just raised as part of a $34 million rights offering.That one thing is to go hard and fast on a marketing effort for its lead exoskeleton technology and start bringing revenues so as to start concurrently returning value to the shareholders that have been with this one since before said technology was at-market.For anybody new to Ekso, the company has developed what it calls Ekso GT, which is an exoskeleton designed to help get stroke and spinal injury patients moving quicker and easier than is generally the case with the current program; doing so by offering a combination of motor support and skeletal reinforcement. It is a suit type system that reinforces the legs and lower parts of the body and can be mechanically manipulated to replicate the gait of the person undergoing treatment.To date, things have been relatively slow in terms of getting the Ekso GT into facilities in the US and Europe. This isn't necessarily the fault of the company and is more likely a symptom of the fact that the market for this sort of technology is very immature and Ekso is both having to try and educate physicians and patients as well as close out on sales (which, coupled with the million-dollar price tag for such technology isn't an easy thing to do).With that said, however, the circa 12 month sales cycle in which this sort of technology rests has already come and gone since initial regulatory approval and, with the above-mentioned capital now in hand, it looks as though management is poised to ramp things up.The latest board addition, the above-referenced Wang, is the Chief Investment Officer of Puissance Capital Management, a global asset manager founded in 2015 with offices in the U.S. and China. Why is this important? Because Puissance was the lead single investor in the rights offering, with the fund accounting for $20 million of the $34 million of gross proceeds. It looks as though, then, that Wang is very much on the activist side of the spectrum and his involvement could provide the spark needed to get things moving quickly and in the right direction.The cash on hand negates any near-term dilution risk and should provide runway through to at least this time next year, meaning that if it is allocated efficiently, there exists considerable upside potential on the company's current $33 million market capitalization, weight against a relatively small downside risk. Debt at last count (June 30, 2017) came in at around $6 million.Check out our previous coverage of this one here. We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on EKSO, sign up below!Image courtesy of cea + via FlickrDisclosure: We have no position in EKSO and have not been compensated for this article.