A Look at the Week in Healthcare and Biotech

  • Abbot Labs recorded the first sale of Amitiza in Japan, resulting in a $15M milestone payment to Sucampo on Tuesday. Nevertheless, the thinly-traded equity reacted slowly to the immediate cash-infusion, but gained 16% in the following trading session when Rescula received FDA approval.
  • One of our stories this week featured Endo Health Solutions, which has been so battered and bruised that it’s too cheap to ignore. Sometimes, bad news can be a great signal to buy.
  • Cadence held its Investor Day last week, highlighting lead product Ofirmev’s growth trajectory. Since then, when we first covered the stock, CADX has climbed 15%. The company also picked up some non-dilutive funds on the 12th.
  • Despite investor misgivings about pimavanserin, Acadia secured some solid data for the Parkinson’s Disease Psychosis treatment. And after a financing this week, significant pressure has been relieved from shares.
  • We opined that Isis’ broad portfolio and extensive partnerships demonstrate industry confidence in the company’s antisense technology, but expressed misgivings about Kynamro’s reception at an FDA panel in October. Although we’re more interested in the long-run, ISIS  surprisingly gained on a negative CHMP vote Friday.
  • Halozyme Therapeutics has a lot going for it, and over the weekend we saw data at ASH that demonstrated major improvements in its latest reformulation of MabThera. In the two months following PropThink’s original article featuring HALO, share price doubled. We still see value here, despite a recent retracing.
  • Our write-up on JAZZ turned out to be a flop, as the stock reacted positively Friday to the FDA’s rejection of a Citizen Petition. The surprise gains are likely attributable to rosy commentary from analysts.
  • We suggested on November 30 that BCRX’s knee-jerk pop was overdone. Shorting the stock before the close could have netted a 20% return over the next few trading sessions.
  • ACRX was weak following its last capital raise, and with a few upcoming catalysts we opined that the stock could offer some short-term run-up gains; the stock closed at $4.08 on Friday, a ~20% increase since our article. It’s unwise to get greedy, and profit-taking might be advisable.
  • Management at Organovo is cleaning up the balance sheet in order to more aggressively execute its business strategy. Our report sheds some light on this space-age 3-D printing technology.
  • Investors were widely expectant of a NCE decision on Friday, and without it, AMRN declined just before the close. It’s still too speculative to be played without options in our opinion.
  • PropThink has covered ZIOPHARM extensively in the last few months, and this week we reiterated the oncology developer’s potential. Read through some of our previous research here.