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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Weekend of Cancer and Ocology Data at AACR; semi-preview for ASCO (ALTH, AMGN, ARIA, ARRY, AZN, BIIB, CELG, CRIS, IMMU, IMGN, INFI, MEDX, MNTA, ONCY, PFE, PCYC, SUPG, TELK, THLD)
This weekend will kick off a rather important oncology meeting, and it has a chance of setting the expectations for the highly anticipated ACSO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) annual meeting next month. The American Association for Cancer Research Meeting will take place in Denver, CO. and many of the smaller and larger cancer and disease biotech and drug companies will be presenting data. Amazingly enough, this will be the 100th annual meeting.
Allos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALTH) will present data from an in vitro study examining the potency of pralatrexate in colon, breast, ovarian, lung, prostate, and head and neck cancer cell lines.
Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) had industry news earlier this week about its experimental drug called AMG 479 shows promise against pancreatic cancer. Amgen will also be presenting lung cancer data.
ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARIA) will offer new preclinical data on deforolimus, its investigational mTOR inhibitor, AP24534, its investigational multi-targeted kinase inhibitor, and its investigational anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor.
Array BioPharma, Inc. (ARRY) has eighteen abstracts being presented at the meeting and will disclose findings in 7 new anti-cancer programs. Lung and colon cancer data are in these presentations.
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Did Traders Get SuperGen & Celgene Wrong? (SUPG, CELG)
There are two interesting calls out this morning around SuperGen (NASDAQ: SUPG). As you will recall, it was just under pressure yesterday over Dacogen missed its primary endpoints in trials. SuperGen closed down at $1.75 yesterday on almost 2.8 million shares. SuperGen came close to a 52-week low yesterday as its year-range had been $1.66 to $6.63.
But this morning we have already seen two analyst UPGRADES in the stock. Rodman & Renshaw has raised its old “Market Perform” rating up to a higher “Market Outperform” rating. Susquehanna Financial, another boutique, has raised its prior “Neutral” rating to a higher “Positive” rating.
Keep in mind these are boutique calls and have yet to generate any trades this morning. But shares are indicated higher after a near 15% drop on the bad news. This news was what gave Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ: CELG) such a large pop yesterday. Interestingly enough, Celgene shares are also popping by 1% higher in pre-market trading.
Jon C. Ogg
July 2, 2008
SuperGen's Pain May Be Celgene's Gain (SUPG, CELG)
SuperGen (NASDAQ: SUPG) is feeling some pain today after the company reported that its Dacogen missed its primary endpoints of showing a statistically significant advantage on median survival compared to standard care. Supergen said response rates were similar to those in other Dacogen clinical trials. Dacogen is partnered with Eisai and treats bone-marrow disease MDS, The results of this trial conducted by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer has SUPG down 13% to $1.78 in thin volume pre-market trading.
Interestingly enough, this is being tallied up as a win for Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG). Its MDS treatment is Vidaza and this is now going to be counted as less competition. Celgene is up over 3% pre-market at $65.95 (9:14 AM EST) on more than 418,000 shares in pre-market trading.
As a reminder, one-time gains at large caps from smaller company woes are frequently forgotten about. For a size comparison, the market cap for SuperGen was close to $118 million and the market cap for Celgene is over $27 Billion.
Jon Ogg
July 1, 2008
