More Videos
SPECIAL REPORT
MOST SHARED
- Health-Care Reform Does Little To Contain Costs: Analysts
- Home Prices Sank Further In Most Parts of US in 3rd Quarter
- 'Peak Oil' Closer Than IEA Forecasts Show: Report
- News Corp. May Pull Content From Google Searches
- Jobless Rate to Hit 10.5%, Keeping Fed in Box: Poll
- If Mickey Mouse Has to Change—What Does That Say About You?
- Nov. 10: S&P Stocks Trading at New 52-Week Highs
- Treasurys Head Lower as Auction Fails to Impress
- America Is On Sale
- Trader Tax Sound Off
- The Lloyd's Prayer
- Playing Activision and Other Video Game Stocks: Analyst
- Expect 'At Least' Another 10-15% Upside: Fund Manager
- If Mickey Mouse Has to Change—What Does That Say About You?
- Nov. 10: S&P Stocks Trading at New 52-Week Highs
- Passive Job Search Strategies
- Back Off, Regulators!
- America Is On Sale
- Warren Buffett and the Crisis: 'Brilliant Moves Interspersed with Some Surprising Errors'
- Housing: 'Shadow Inventory' Dwarfs Loan Modifications
- Home Prices Decline Further In Most Parts of US
- Sen. Dodd Hopes to Confirm Bernanke by Christmas
- Jobless Rate to Hit 10.5%, Keeping Fed in Box: Poll
- Credit Card Firms Squeeze Customers as Rules Loom
- 'Thriller' Art: Warhol's Jackson Work Could Net $700,000
- Health Reform Does Little to Contains Costs: Analysts
- Ponzi Proceeds: Bidding on Madoff's Toys
- Quiz: Do You Know Your Coca-Cola Myths?
RSS FEED
Pharma's Market
Text Size 
 |
Shiho Fukada / AP Carl Icahn |
But billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn apparently sees the stock as being on sale. At the end of June he held nearly 7,000,000 shares of AMLN [AMLN
Loading...
()
]. As of September 30th, according to the latest Securities and Exchange Commission filing posted late last week, Icahn owned nearly 11,000,000 shares of the San Diego biotech.
AMLN has been hammered by safety concerns over the diabetes drug, Byetta, which it shares with Eli Lilly [LLY
Loading...
()
] , by worries that the companies' experimental once-a-week version of Byetta might have hit some regulatory obstacles and by a competitive threat from Novo Nordisk [NVO
Loading...
()
]. Amylin's market value is now less than a billion bucks. Not quite as shocking as the fact that General Motors [GM
Loading...
()
] is now worth only $2 billion, but a huge fall nonetheless.
There's anecdotal evidence that the Byetta safety scare may have subsided. In a research note to clients this morning Lazard Capital Markets analyst Matthew Osbourne reports that based on data from IMS Health [RX
Loading...
()
], which follows drug sales, prescriptions for Byetta are bouncing back. In the week ending November 7th, total prescriptions for Byetta jumped four percent. But for the first six weeks of the fourth quarter, Byetta business is still down nearly nine percent from the same period a year ago.
David Kliff writes a newsletter called "The Diabetic Investor" and recently started another business venture www.healthyoutcomes.com, a web site for diabetics like himself. He'd been a longtime bull on AMLN, but recently turned a little sour on the company, in particular, over the way it handled the release of the news about the potential delay in the development of once-a-week Byetta. Amylin put it out in an SEC filing. Barring any unforeseen problems, Kliff still thinks that version of the drug could be a multi-billion-dollar blockbuster.
But for years Kliff had been pounding the table that it wasn't a question of if, but when LLY would buy AMLN. Now he wonders, "Who the hell's gonna buy 'em? At this point there's too much risk, too many things could go wrong right now."
But Kliff can't blame Icahn for increasing his stake. "Why not double down when it's cheap? It's a drop in the bucket to him. You're not talking about major amounts of money here," Kliff told me over the phone this morning. For the record, I've asked LLY officials so many times about buying Amylin that I don't even have to call them to bounce this kind of speculation off of a spokesperson anymore. It's become kind of a running joke between us. Every time they say they're happy with their existing relationship with Amylin. But I'll have yet another chance to ask CEO John Lechleiter about that and to probably get the same answer or some variation of it at the company's analyst/investor meeting next month.
In the meantime, Icahn's increased stake is once again encouraging others to follow his lead. The stock's up, albeit on pretty light volume.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes