The Changing Landscape of Biotech Valuations (ACOR, CBST, MNKD, INCY, SGEN, ITMN, IPXL, MRX, SVNT, VPHM)
The biotech and biohealth universe is changing in size. In 2008 and 2009, partly due to mergers and partly due to market valuations, there had become a surprisingly small number of biotech stocks which had market capitalization rates of more than $1 billion. At one point there were only about 10 or 11 in our universe of biotech stocks that actually had market caps which were very far north of $1 billion, or at least out of the biotech stocks which followed at BioHealth Investor.
We have recently seen Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR), Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CBST), MannKind Corporation (NASDAQ: MNKD), Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ: INCY), Seattle Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGEN), InterMune, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITMN), Impax Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ: IPXL), and Medicis Pharmaceutical Corporation (NYSE: MRX) either get into or get back into the $1 billion market cap club. And then we have Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) and ViroPharma Incorporated (NASDAQ: VPHM) that have been in the club and are currently just short of it.
Due to waves of big emerging drug news and due to strong performance we now have 16 of the biotech and related stocks (at least of those which we cover as pure biotechs) which have market caps north of $2 billion. More importantly, the biotech news flow and he bull market has suddenly helped many stocks rise or at least get back above the $1 billion mark. Many of these had been there before, but the market has helped many new names get back above the $1 billion market capitalization level. And waves of mergers in the last two and three years sort of thinned out the group.
In these we did not take into consideration revenues, earnings, and not even cash. This has largely been news-driven and momentum-driven. Below is a review of each.
Generic Drug Wars… Is Dr. Reddy’s The Answer? (RDY, TEVA, GSK)
Generic drugs are just one of the many combined issues that are coming front and center in the world of healthcare reform. Frankly this is not a new notion. Not all. This weekend came a feature in Barron’s “Asian Trader: Pill Maker That’s Set To Pop” calling Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. (NYSE: RDY) of India the next big drug play for investors. We wanted to look closer under the hood here.
The Indian generic drug company’s ADR closed at $24.61 Friday and Barron’s noted two analysts with big price targets: one giving it room up to $29.63 and and another implied rupee price we pegged around $30.82.
Sales are expected to approximately double to around $3 billion by 2013 and the waves of name brand drugs coming off patent in the U.S. may offer some added hope there. That is the biggest wild card with many noting that generics have a chance to capture a part of what is put at $70 to $80 billion.
Dr. Reddy’s is thought of by the US investor public as a generic player, but it has its own products. It produces finished dosage forms, active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediates, and biotechnology products; and it conducts R&D in cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, inflammation, and bacterial infection.
There are some issues here in other drug makers. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NASDAQ: TEVA) is perhaps the best generics player out there with a whopping $53 billion market cap today versus about $4.1 billion as Dr. Reddy’s market cap.
Teva is a large customer and Dr. Reddy’s also has a distribution pact with GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) for emerging markets and there are some who expect GSK to take a significant stake in the Indian drug maker. Teva’s stock is right around $60 and analysts on average have a price target of $63 and the highest target seen is $70.00. If Teva gets more downgrades on valuation, it seems as though it could pull Dr. Reddy’s down simply as the best can drag down or pull peers higher.
If the markets are flat or solid, it seems that Dr. Reddy’s may have a 2% or so Barron’s-pop. Our problem here with this one is that Dr. Reddy’s shares are up almost 200% in the last year. Its 52-week range is $7.27 to $27.33.
Dr. Reddy’s may have more room to run, but the big move has probably been seen. The recalls may be behind and they may not, ditto with FDA scrutiny. The stock is not cheap by some Indian company valuation standards, so it seems that waiting may offer better risk-reward here than chasing.
JON C. OGG
Value Stocks in Drugs & Biotech (AMGN, BIIB, CBST, CEPH, PDLI)
This weekend we ran screens of several drug and biotech companies in our quest for ‘cheap stocks’ in the BioHealth sector. The intent is not solely for buyout targets because we prefer to look at value stocks rather than just picking buyout hopefuls. The obvious issue that makes most of these cheap is because there have been problems or have been issues that made these look cheap on the surface. To look for sub-market valuations, we used Thomson Reuters estimates for 2009 and 2010 earnings. We then set a maximum target of 15-times earnings and screened out the companies that gave the ‘false positives’ as there were many.
Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN), Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB), Cephalon Inc. (NASDAQ: CEPH), Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CBST), and PDL BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: PDLI) all made the cut. We initially wanted to look for market caps over $1 billion, but we set the bar at $500 million and tried to focus on companies with growth. We included valuation data, performance, and some color on each name. Some, but not all of these, are also in our upcoming biotech buyout targets for 2010.
Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) is one we have long noted during its waves of problems and as it was under future reimbursement pressure that may be more like an old fashioned drug company now as it has matured. The company’s market cap is $56 billion, which is actually now the largest market cap since Genentech is now Roche. Its stock trades at $55.48 and its 52-week trading range is $44.96 to $64.76. Because of the pressure and past issues, it trades at only about 11-times earnings for 2009 ($5.03 est.) and 2010 ($5.14 est.) both. It also trades at under 4-times 2009 and 2010 revenue expectations and it sits with an arsenal of almost $14 billion in cash and equivalents, yet has over $10.5 billion in long-term debt.
Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) is no stranger to issues… another activist was just out this week calling for more action and the company has not been able to get out from under the TYSABRI PML despite the notion that this is a very low risk. At $46.38, its market cap is $13.4 billion and its 52-week trading range is $37.21 to $55.34. Biogen has over $3.1 billion in cash if you include its short-term and long-term investments and it carries just under $1.1 billion in long-term debt. Biogen also trades at 11.6-times the $3.99 EPS target for 2009 and only 10.5-times the $4.42 target for 2010; and Biogen trades at 3-times 2009 expected sales. The risk is here is of course the TYSABRI risks. You never know if they will have to pull it again. This is an opinion rather than a formal target, but TYSABRI is good enough in treatments of MS that it could quite literally have two or three times the number of patients using it if the PML risk can either be quantified better or could be mitigated. Another issue is that it is trying to acquire Facet Biotech Corporation (NASDAQ: FACT) as a diversification and added pipeline move.
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White House signals suport for biosimilars (NVS, AZN, AMGN, DNA, GENZ, GILD, CELG)
The Obama Administration in a letter released Thursday recommended that seven years is enough time to protect brand-name biotech drugs from cheaper generic competition, roughly half the time sought by industry lobbyists.
“Innovation is driven by appropriate competition, and the administration’s policy will spur that competition,” said the letter from Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the Office of Health Reform.
Making generic biotech drugs, called biosimilars, available to the masses is part of the Obama Administration’s strategy to lower the price of the prescription drugs, many of which can cost in excess of $20,000 a year per patient.
A shorter time of market exclusivity for brand-name drugs may be detrimental to some biotech companies. Brand-name biotech drug makers such as Amgen Inc. (Nasdaq: AMGN), Genentech Inc. (NYSE: DNA) and Genzyme Corp (Nasdaq: GENZ), Gilead Sciences Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) and Celgene Corp. (Nasdaq: CELG) are fighting against biosimilars to protect exclusivity for their products.
The Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents brand-name companies, “is extremely concerned” that seven years is not enough time, and may limit product development.
Yet it could be beneficial to generic drugmakers such as Novartis AG (NYSE: NVS), as well as drugmaker AstraZeneca plc (NYSE: AZN), which recently began targeting the biosimilars market.
See related story on biosimilars.
Obama Keeps Target of Generic Biologics: Focus on Anemia (AMGN, JNJ, NVS)
Politics and healthcare are two words which bring about unquantifiable risks for many biohealth investors. In President Obama’s speech today, he did say how he wanted biologic drugs to have an easier path for generic competition in the field. This is not necessarily a new call from the administration, but it is a continued push against the biotech field. That was a broad statement where you never know how far it can or how far it will ultimately go. But the president did specifically note anemia as a target for the generic competition. Again, this is a repeat, but it means a further direct push that is not being let up on. That puts Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) for its Aranesp and Epogen as a front and center assault target of the administration if you take the statements at face value.
Amgen generated $15.003 billion in 2008 total revenues. Its growth petered out as the 2007 revenues were $14.771 billion and the 2006 revenues were $14.268 billion. Aranesp, for the treatment of anemia associated with CRF (both in patients on dialysis and patients not on dialysis), had global sales of $3.1 billion for all of 2008. EPOGEN, for the treatment of anemic adult and pediatric patients with CRF who are on dialysis, sales in the United States were roughly $2.5 billion for each of the last three years.
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Generics vs. Brands: Is Mylan Takeover Bait? (MYL, PFE)
Mylan, Inc. (NYSE: MYL) is trading up today on some hope that an analyst research report that puts the company down as possible takeover bait. The report comes from Caris & Co., and the possible interested buyer is said to be Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE). This may sound odd, but Pfizer has made actions toward generic growth expressed how there is more and more interest in generic drugs.
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Generic Makers Looking For Acquisitions (TEVA, WPI)
At today’s Generic Pharmaceutical Association’s Silver Anniversary Meeting, there was an interesting take. It is not just that generics are only one-sixth of drug sales, and it wasn’t that the generic drug makers are actually defensive stocks because they are probably the last area where spending cuts will occur. What is most interesting is that it sure sounds like the big generic drug makers still want to be acquirers in this current climate.
In separate CNBC interviews with Mike Huckman, The CEOs of both Teva Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ: TEVA) and Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NYSE: WPI) did more than hint that they wanted to do more deals. Both companies formally said they wanted to be acquirers in the current climate.
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