The biotech bulls are in charge this week. The sellers must have been watching the Bernanke Press Conference today or maybe buying gold as biotech stocks had one of their best days of the year. The bellwether ETF IBB was up 2.37% to $108.71 an all time high exceeding its high of $105 in June of 2001. I am a little worried because it feels like 1999 all over again but the industry has matured over 10 years both in terms of financing and product. Other ETF;s FBT and XBI were up over 2% as well.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN $67) led the charge with an amazing 28.6% move (but down 7% after hours) as the Company and partner Bayer announced results from two Phase III studies yesterday and today both utilizing Regeneron’s Trap technology platform, antibodies that block are potent inhibitors of extracellular signaling proteins.Sanofi-aventis and Regeneron announced yesterday that their VEGF Trap, a second line treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer, met its primary endpoint of overall survival. Today the Company announced positive results for VEGF Trap -Eye in central retinal vein occlusion, meeting its primary endpoint with 60.2% of patients gaining at least 15 letters of vision from baseline.
Regeneron was added to the Rayno Life Science Portfolio on 2/2/09 at a price of $18.
Other big movers in the Rayno Life Science Portfolio today were:
Albany Molecular (AMRI $4.92) up 4.9% our turn-around play with financial results expected May 4.
Seattle Genetics (SGEN $16.34) up 3.94% on high volume of 1M shares. SGEN is our pick in ADC technology with a diversified cancer therapy pipeline.
Other 2%+ movers were Alexion (ALXN), Micromet (MITI), Sequenom (SQNM), SeraCare (SRCL), Viropharma (VPHM).
One of our small cap value picks SuperGen (SUPG $2.76) announced earnings after hours today with EPS up 1c and Royalty revenues up 2.6M in Q 1 compared to prior year quarter. Stockholder equity was strengthened now at $127.3M with $125M in cash.
Raygent » Rayno Biopharma Portfolio:Update 4/4/11
On another site we presented the Icahn Effect in Biotech and a list of his holdings many of which we recommended such as Biogen-Idec, Exelixis and Regeneron.