Breaking Down Dendreon's Move (DNDN)
Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN) is one biotech stock where traders and investors alike also join groups of patients in their march toward to the company. The stock was an incredible performer today, and one which makes you wonder how well it would have done had the stock market not been so ugly.
Dendreon traded up 33% today to $6.93 on more than 35 million shares. At one point its stock traded north of $9.00. It traded more than 40,000 Call Option contracts today for the October current month expirations, it traded over 37,000 call option contracts for November expiration, and traded over 90,000 call option contracts for the January-2009 expiration. If you add all that up on a fully leveraged basis, you would see that this is equivalent to more than another 16.7 million shares.
- Over at 24/7 Wall St. we gave our expectations ahead for the stock, and below is all the data from the company.
Its interim data from Phase III PROVENGE IMPACT trial showed that the IDMC observed no safety concerns, and it recommended that the study continue. The company itself has completed the planned interim analysis of the Phase III, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled IMPACT clinical trial designed to assess the safety and efficacy of PROVENGE in men with metastatic androgen-independent prostate cancer. We do want to outline how that despite this data being good, Dendreon is not suddenly a slam dunk and still has many risks associated with it.
Dendreon remains blinded to the data, but the independent data monitoring committee reported to Dendreon a 20% reduction in the risk of death in the PROVENGE arm relative to placebo and observed no safety concerns and recommended that the study continue to its final analysis.
The final analysis is expected in the middle of 2009 and if the study demonstrates approximately a 22% reduction in the risk of death (based on 304 events), the company would expect the study to meet its primary endpoint of overall survival.
Jon C. Ogg
October 6, 2008
