While some analysts thought Recro Pharma, Inc. of Malvern would face an uphill battle against pharmaceutical giants such as Johnson and Johnson, news continues to bode well for the company’s future.

The specialty pharmaceutical company developing non-opioid therapeutics for the treatment of pain announced June 30 it was added to the Russell Microcap Index.

The Russell Microcap Index measures the performance of the microcap segment of the U.S. equity market. Microcap stocks make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. equity market (by market cap) and consist of the smallest 1,000 securities in the small-cap Russell 2000 Index, plus the next 1,000 smallest eligible securities by market cap.

The company also had a successful initial public offering in March and just used its non-opioid Dex-IN as it dosed its first patient in a Phase IIb clinical trial of patients undergoing bunionectomy surgery.

Annual reconstitution of Russell indexes captures the 4,000 largest U.S. stocks at the end of May, and ranks them. Membership in the Russell Microcap Index, which remains in place for a year, means automatic inclusion in the appropriate growth and value style indexes. Russell determines membership primarily by objective, market-capitalization rankings and style attributes.

Russell indexes are widely used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and as benchmarks for passive and active investment strategies. Approximately $5.2 trillion in assets are benchmarked to Russell Indexes. Russell calculates 700,000 benchmarks daily, covering about 98 percent of the investable market globally, 80 countries and more than 10,000 securities.

Recro is moving forward on research and development of non-opioid drugs which would help patients avoid many of the side effects associated with traditional opioid therapeutics. If approved, Dex-IN would be the first acute pain drug in its class.