AVI BioPharm (AVII) Spikes Up
AVI BioPharma (AVII) is up 29% to $2.03 which give the company a market cap of $173 million.
Barron’s made favorable comments about the firm on Saturday.
The company also said it received expanded contract funding of approximately $11.5 million from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI) to support development of the Investigational New Drug (IND) data package for its candidate drug, AVI-7012, to treat Junin virus infection. To date, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has contracted with AVI for work potentially worth up to $45 million for the development of AVI’s RNA-based drug candidates to treat Ebola, Marburg and Junin virus infections (AVI-6002, AVI-6003 and AVI-7012, respectively).
Douglas A. McIntyre
AVI BioPharma (AVII) Falls As News Flow Runs Dry
AVI BioPharma (AVII) is down 10% this morning, due, it would seem to the fact that the company’s shares are driven by news, and, at this point AVII has nothing to announce.
It last press release was about the results and scientific findings of its Phase 1 clinical trial assessing the “proof of concept” and safety of AVI-4658 in patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) have been published online in the journal, Lancet Neurology.
But, those were only Phase 1 trials and that is not enough to keep a biotech trading higher in a down market.
AVII changes hands at $1.90, knocking its already small market cap down to $163 million.
Douglas A. McIntyre
The Rise of Biotechs May Be Attracting The Shorts (PFE, MRK, BAX, BDSI, SPPI, GNBT, AVII, CEGE, BBH, GILD)
Biotechnology stocks have risen faster than any sector in the past 30 days, although the new short-interest data suggest traders are now increasing their directional bets against the group.
Large biotechs including Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) are in the top 10 of all large-cap stocks with the greatest increase in the number of shares shorted. And biotechs including Baxter (BAX) are among the stocks seeing a greater than 50 percent increase in short interest from mid-June until the end of that month, the most recent short interest data available.
Perhaps one reason biotechs are an increasing near-term target of the shorts is that the group’s price movement has been counter to the overall market. The price of all biotech stocks with a market cap of $1 billion or more is up 3.6 percent in the past 30 days, vs. a drop of 6.2 percent for the S&P 500. Biotech is the only group to advance more than 3 percent over that time period, other than health care services, up 3.2 percent.
Pfizer is not a stock most traders bet against, with only 3.5 percent of its float sold short. But the short interest of Pfizer rose 16.2 percent to more than 235 million shares by the end of June. Merck shares, with a heftier 6.9 percent sold short, saw its short interest rise 9.1 percent over the same time period.
Some smaller biotech names have seen a very large short interest increase, including BioDelivery Sciences International (Nasdaq: BDSI), up 93 percent. Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: SPPI) short interest is up 54 percent. Biotech stocks with at least a 40 percent rise in short interest include Generex Biotechnology Corp. (Nasdaq: GNBT), AVI BioPharma Inc. (Nasdaq: AVII) and Cell Genesis Inc. (Nasdaq: CEGE).
One of the biotech ETFs that is watched most closely by traders is the Biotech HOLDRs (BBH). One of its top holdings is Gilead Sciences Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD), which makes up roughly a third of the index. Its stock saw a 17 percent increase in its short interest to more than 20 million shares.
The biotech Holdrs in early July rose to levels not seen since September 2008, although the index has fallen early this month after creating a bearish candlestick pattern. The fall occurred not not long after MACD, an oscillator watched by technical traders, turned negative — Mike Tarsala
BioHealth & Healthcare Score Major Win in Russell Index Rebalance (AVII, CTIC, CEGE, IPXL, STEM, SUPG, VICL, XOMA)
This year’s Russell 3000 Index rebalancing and reconstitution may end up being the mother of all index rebalances. Because of the billions managed by Russell and because of the billions of outside funds that benchmark to the various Russell indexes, this year has many changes. All in all, there are over 400 additions and deletions to the Russell 3000 alone. The count was overwhelmingly “good” for healthcare. We screened out a few stocks under the Russell “Health Care” sector as they were not classic companies in the “BioHealth” space. But even after we screened those out, the ratio was huge by our own individual count:
- Healthcare additions were 57 and deletions were only 12… Yep a ratio of almost 5:1 for Health Care in the Russell 3000 alone.
Many of these additions or deletions were very surprising and based mostly on recent share price changes. Some of those standouts are are AVI Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (CTIC), Cell Genesys, Inc. (CEGE), Impax Laboratories Inc. (IPXL), StemCells Inc. (STEM), SuperGen Inc. (SUPG), Vical Inc. (VICL), and XOMA Ltd. (XOMA). We have broken out the fullist of additions and deletions below, and we started with the additions first as they may see more benefit between now and next Friday’s adjustments.
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Last Gains Seen on Speculative Swine Flu Stocks? (NVAX, GNBT, BCRX, PURE, VICL, VIVO, AVII)
As you will see, the life has been taken out of many of the very speculative swine flu stocks from last week’s highs.
NovaVax, Inc. (NVAX) gained almost 15% to $1.93 today, but this is down about half from last week’s highs of $3.88; shares were at $0.81 before the swine flu scare came out.
Generex Biotechnology Corp. (NASDAQ: GNBT) was up 18% today at $0.438; shares peaked at $0.70 last week and were at $0.27 before the swine flu scare came out.
BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX) rose 14% to $3.24; shares peaked at $4.89 last week and were at $1.75 before the swine flu scare came out.
Pure Bioscience (NASDAQ: PURE) was down 1.2% at $2,40; shares peaked at $3.19 last week and were at $1.75 before the swine flu scare came out.
Vical Inc (NASDAQ: VICL) fell by 7% to $2.09; shares peaked at $3.30 last week and were at $2.40 before the swine flu scare came out.
Meridian Bioscience Inc. (NASDAQ: VIVO) were up barely above flat at $17.69; shares peaked at $18.30 last week and were at $16.13 before the swine flu scare came out.
AVI BioPharma Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII) was flat at $0.76; shares peaked at $1.29 last week and were at $0.74 before the swine flu scare came out.
Jon C. Ogg
Speculative Flu Stocks Started Giving Gains Back (NVAX, GNBT, BCRX, PURE, VICL, VIVO, AVII)
This week there have been many crazy stock gains among the speculative biotech sector, and these were tied directly to the ’speculative stocks’ that could have any ties in reality, fiction, and even imagination to a cure or hope in the fight against Swine Flu.
As you will see below, Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX), Generex Biotechnology Corp. (NASDAQ: GNBT), BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX), Pure Bioscience (NASDAQ: PURE), Vical Inc (NASDAQ: VICL), Meridian Bioscience Inc. (NASDAQ: VIVO), and AVI BioPharma Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII) have all begun their overbought roll-over.
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Swine Flu Speculation Stocks (GILD, BCRX, NVAX, GNBT, VICL, AVII, CRXL, RHHBY, GSK)
Monday is looking like a SWINE FLU speculative flu stock stock bonanza. The two approved drug treatments, not vaccines, which are being released are Tamiflu made by Roche (OTC: RHHBY) and Relenza made by GlaxoSmithkline (NYSE: GSK). Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD) gets royalties from Roche for Tamiflu, and its shares are indicated north of $48.00 after a $45.80 close on Friday.
There is a second-tier level of stocks here: BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BCRX) was up big Friday as it is a maker of drugs that block key enzymes in viral diseases like the flu, shares are indicated over $3.00 after a $2.21 close on Friday. Novavax, Inc. (NVAX) is another clinical stage company using its virus-like particle platform technology for flu treatments; stock is indicated north of $2.50 after closing up some 75% at $1.42 Friday.
And here is the third-tier of these stocks: Generex Biotechnology Corp. (GNBT) is being passed around as a penny stock flu player with shares indicated around $0.40 after closing up 25% at almost $0.34 Friday. Vical Inc. (VICL) closed up 3% Friday at $2.53 and shares are indicated up around $3.00. AVI Biopharma, Inc. (AVII) rose over 20% to $0.89 Friday and shares are indicated up marginally as a result. Crucell NV (CRXL) has a faster way of making flu vaccines. This closed up 1% on Friday and is hardly moving.
As a reminder, these huge gap ups generally have a one day to multi-day move with each move usually being less than the first. As with issues such as SARS and bird flu, the world did not end and it was only the SARS scare which actually caused real damage. You can probably bet that you will be hearing “squeal like a pig!” jokes.
JON C. OGG
