Biotech Implosion: Favrille (FVRL)
Favrille, Inc. (NASDAQ: FVRL) may have just joined the realm of biotech zombies this morning, or close to it. The company announced Phase III results which failed to show statistically significant improvement in its primary endpoint, and this was the registration trial of Specifid following Rituxan in patients with follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The primary endpoint was to measure analysis of time to progression, and it failed to show a statistically significant improvement in the treatment arm. The arms were Specifid plus Leukine following Rituxan compared to the control arm of placebo plus Leukine following Rituxan.
Analysis of all subgroups also did not show any significant differences in primary or secondary endpoints when adjusted for prognostic factors.
This one was only a $71.8 million market cap before the implosion. Now shares are down 80% pre-market at $0.35.
The good news is that the $25 million in tangible book value may let it find some support after that huge drop. The bad news is that this lead candidate failure puts the company back into mostly pre-clinical stage for other products.
Technically this can’t be considered a zombie because it has other pre-clinical candidates. But try telling that to someone coming in from a 3-day weekend and seeing an 80% drop at the open. This was already down well over 50% in the last year before this.
Jon Ogg
May 27, 2008