Achillion Pharmaceuticals (ACHN) Stock Tanking Today on Heavy Volume
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Achillion Pharmaceuticals (ACHN) - Get Report are sliding, down 7.48% to $10.76 on heavy volume in afternoon trading Thursday.
This morning, the company posted its fourth quarter 2014 earnings results. Achillion posted a loss of 21 cents per share for the period, worse than the loss of 18 cents analysts were expecting.
For 2015, the company now expects research and development expenses to be in a range of between $85 million to $95 million. Achillion also guided for a loss of about 95 cents per share for the full year, compared to the loss of 83 cents analysts are expecting.
On Tuesday, analysts at Barclays initiated coverage on Achillion Pharmaceuticals with an "underweight" rating and a price target of $8.
The firm said changes to the hepatitis C landscape will provide little opportunity for Achillion to meaningfully differentiate. Barclays thinks the company will get left behind, regardless of solid clinical data.
About 9.18 million shares have exchanged hands as of 1:09 p.m. ET today, compared to its average trading volume of about 6.55 million shares a day.
New Haven, CT-based Achillion Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company, with its primary business in discovering, developing and commercializing treatments for infectious diseases.
The company is focused on developing short-duration combination therapies for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus infection.
On February 26, 2015, RealMoneyPro.com contributor Bret Jensen wrote about his buy-sell strategy on biotech stocks. Here's a snippet of what he had to say:
I have developed the following philosophy over the years based on experience, often painful. It is my rule of thumb when it comes to small biotech and biopharma stocks. That is to sell 10% of your original stake once one achieves a 50% gain, 20% of the original stake after the stock doubles and 20% more if one is fortunate to have your stock triple.
Your profit is now locked in and the other half of the original stake now rides on the "house's" money unless something drastically changes on the company's prospects. I have found it to be a prudent and profitable strategy over the years.
- Bret Jensen, 'Develop Biotech 'Buy-Sell' Strategy' originally published 2/26/2105 on RealMoneyPro.com.
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