Friday's Health Winners & Losers
Idenix
(IDIX)
tripped on a regulatory call, while other health stocks approached the weekend in good graces from both offerings and repurchases.
Idenix took a 36% hit Friday when it and partner
Novartis
(NVS) - Get Novartis AG Report
halted development of hepatitis C treatment valopicitabine after a negative risk/benefit assessment from the Food and Drug Administration.
The stock deflated $2.10, to $3.69, while Novartis was 79 cents, or 1.4%, lower at $54.99. Idenix is part of the Nasdaq Biotechnology index, which was up 2.54, or 0.31%, to 826.20 nonetheless.
Others, such as
Dyax
(DYAX)
and
TheStreet Recommends
Amgen
(AMGN) - Get Amgen Inc. Report
in particular, had a better day spurred by share shuffling.
Dyax increased its previously announced offering of 9.5 million shares to 10.5 million, and priced the offering Friday at $3.67 a share. It also gave underwriters the option to purchase 1.6 million additional shares at the public offering price to cover any overallotments. The company gained 28 cents, or 7.4%, to $3.94 on Friday.
Amgen got a slight boost after it announced late Thursday that its board authorized an additional $5 billion repurchase. The company still has $1.5 billion left under its previous buyback program. In May it said it would repurchase $3 billion shares. The stock rose $1.29, or 2.3%, to $57.24.
Elsewhere,
Memory Pharmaceuticals
( MEMY) ticked up a bit after saying it finished enrollment for its phase IIa trial of its Alzheimer's candidate MEM 3454. It expects to report top-line results for it in the fourth quarter. The stock rose 7 cents, or 3%, to $2.31.
On the falling end, small-cap
Oscient Pharmaceuticals
(OSCI)
lost 15 cents, or 3.3%, to $4.41 after reporting preliminary revenue expectations for the second quarter. Oscient said it expects $15 million to $16 million in revenue, which falls short of the Thomson Financial consensus of $17.4 million.
In the comparable quarter in 2006, before the purchase of cholesterol-regulating Antara tablets, the company saw revenue of $4.6 million. Oscient estimates that about $14 million of this year's second-quarter revenue will be from Antara tablets, and around $1.5 million will come from its Factive tablets for community acquired pneumonia and chronic bronchitis.
