Trading Biotech: A Taste of PropThink this Past Week

Sunshine Heart has rallied 20% since dropping to $5.00 in mid-May following an equity financing. PropThink’s subscribers knew to buy the dip, and on Monday, Mr. King published the investment thesis for this device developer. Despite the profitable short-term gains, this is a high conviction long-term pick.

AVEO reported on Thursday evening that Astellas is walking away from collaborative work on Tivozanib in renal cell carcinoma. Even more disconcerting from a management team that’s already on thin ice for its decisions regarding Tivo’s development path, is that the company waited a full 6 days to inform shareholders of Astellas’ move. PropThink said that AVEO might be worth a flier following the AdCom disaster at the end of last month because it does appear that Tivo works, but with Astellas walking away and continued negligence on the part of management, we’ve lost faith in this oncology developer (although we were right about the stock basing around $3.00).

We asked one of PropThink’s collaborators attending Digestive Disease Week to report back on the industry’s reception of Synergy’s plecanatide. We’ve been bullish since the company got a financing out of the way, and the reports from the conference were quite positive. In our view, Synergy is a great long-term opportunity given its similarities to – and benefits over — Ironwood Pharma. SGYP is up 14% since Mr. King called the dip a buy.

Stemline IPO’d in January and Mr. Deryugin made the case for a post-ASCO rally. The company is recently cash-infused, has a low float, and demand from its latest offering was heavily over-subscribed. With three abstracts at ASCO in early June, there’s reason to believe that Wall Street may start doing the work on this relatively new cancer stem cell name.

The ruling in a Markman hearing last week cleared out a big overhang for Cubist. This antibiotic developer, we believe, is set up for a rally in the second half of 2013 with late-stage data due for its lead drug candidate, CXA-201. PropThink’s subscribers who bought two weeks ago are up 17%.

Some investors disagreed with Mr. King’s assertion that MAKO Surgical’s 1Q wasn’t strong enough to warrant a buy, and that management still had to deliver before large investors would step in. Despite a brief rally, it seems the market agrees with Mr. King, and MAKO remains flat since the column.

AcelRx reported data from the last of its Phase III studies on its NanoTab PCA system this week. PropThink recommended the stock last December, and ACRX has since more than doubled in price.

TKMR remains flat since PropThink first covered the RNAi developer, but there’s reason to believe investors will get motivated to own this name yet this year. Here’s the report.

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