As Jim Cramer watched Valeant's outgoing CEO Mike Pearson testify on price gouging this week, he wondered if the worst is finally over for all things pharmaceutical.
"When this kind of controversy finally gets to the point where there are Congressional hearings, historically it's the endpoint, not the start of an attack on what drug companies do," the "Mad Money" host said.
In fact, Cramer is seeing signs everywhere that at last the long drought for drug companies on Wall Street might finally be over.
My conclusion is yes, if you don't' own pharma, I would say it is time to do some buying.Jim Cramer
The first indication was consolidations have started again. Abbott Labs purchased St. Jude Medical for $25 billion in a deal that Cramer loved. Sanofi also made a hostile bid for Medivation, and AbbVie announced a $5.8 billion acquisition of Stemcentrx.
"Put it all together, and we saw $45 billion worth of merger announcements in one day," Cramer noted. "That's incredible, and it's a welcome sign … This kind of M&A is crucial to the value underpinnings of a group that is often based on pipelines, not earnings."
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The second hopeful sign for pharma was that drug companies with good earnings are finally being rewarded with higher prices. That might seem logical, but the opposite had been occurring in the beginning of the year.
Bristol-Myers Squibb delivered a stunning quarterly report on Thursday, and the stock jumped 2.8 percent. Even the companies that reported less-than-stellar numbers have done OK, such as Celgene.
As for Valeant itself, stopping the bleeding at that company is vital to the entire group. And while Cramer didn't like the way late Perrigo CEO Joe Papa left the company, he does think Valeant is better off with him.
It gave Cramer the sense that pharma could be within 10 percent of a bottom. So, could pharma transform from a roving bear market to raging bull?
"My conclusion is yes, if you don't' own pharma, I would say it is time to do some buying," Cramer said.
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