Best Biotech Stocks To Watch Right Now


Stocks in the U.S. appear headed for a higher open despite losses overseas.

ANDREW CULLEN/REUTERS

S&P 500 futures have gained 0.3%, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures have risen 0.2%. Nasdaq Composite futures have advanced 0.1%.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals (ALXN) had dropped 4.6% to $131 after the biotech company beat earnings forecasts but offered below-consensus guidance.

Atwood Oceanics (ATW) has gained 5.3% to $5.60 after the offshore driller’s earnings beat the Street consensus.

3M (MMM) has gained 1.8% to $150.50 after announcing that it would keep and reinvest in its health information systems unit. 3M also said it would increase its dividend.

Edwards Lifesciences (EW) has climbed 5.6% to $81.20 after beating earnings forecasts and raising its guidance.

Merck (MRK) has dropped 2.8% to $49 after the pharmaceutical giant beat earnings forecasts but offered guidance that fell short of expectations.

Best Biotech Stocks To Watch Right Now: Biogen Idec Inc(BIIB)


Advisors’ Opinion:

  • [By Brian Orelli]

    While that’s fine for clinical trials, it may make it difficult for Ionis’ drugs to compete with drugs that work as well but don’t have side effects that need to be monitored. Of course, for Spinraza, which Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Ionis recently got approved for spinal muscular atrophy, side effects aren’t an issue because there aren’t any other treatment options at the moment.

  • [By Chris Lange]

    Biogen Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) had its short interest increase to 2.63 million shares from the previous 2.36 million. The stock closed Friday at $305.20, within a 52-week range of $223.02 to $333.65.

  • [By WWW.THESTREET.COM]

    Breakups have the potential to create a lot of value. Just look at what Biogen (BIIB) did with its hemophilia franchise. Spun out as Bioverativ (BIVV) , shares started trading earlier this year. The stock has climbed some 23% on seemingly no news, Cramer noted.

Best Biotech Stocks To Watch Right Now: ArQule Inc.(ARQL)

Advisors’ Opinion:

  • [By Paul Ausick]

    ArQule Inc. (NASDAQ: ARQL) dropped about 23% Friday, to post a new 52-week low of $1.13 after closing at $1.47 on Thursday. The stock’s 52-week high is $2.17. Volume was about 15 times the daily average of around 150,000 shares. The biopharmaceutical company said this morning that a phase 3 trial of a cancer drug did not meet the primary endpoint of improving overall survival.

Best Biotech Stocks To Watch Right Now: ARIAD Pharmaceuticals Inc.(ARIA)


Advisors’ Opinion:

  • [By Lisa Levin]

    Healthcare shares gained around 0.73 percent in trading on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARIA), and VCA Inc (NASDAQ: WOOF).

Best Biotech Stocks To Watch Right Now: Medivation Inc.(MDVN)

Advisors’ Opinion:

  • [By Scott Rubin]

    Big gainers on the day included Intersil Corp (NASDAQ: ISIL), which jumped 20 percent on news of a buyout, and Medivation (NASDAQ: MDVN), which added 20 percent on a deal with Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) related to its cancer drug. Cotiviti Holdings Inc (NYSE: COTV) lost around 9 percent in the wake of a mid-day sell-off and Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE: MRO) fell 7 percent in the wake of a management shakeup.

  • [By Ben Levisohn]

    RBC’s Simos Simeonidis and Matthew Eckler try to find the right comparison for Pfizer’s (PFE) purchase of Medivation (MDVN):

    Scott Eisen/Bloomberg News

    We were obviously wrong with our Sector Perform rating: while we knew an M&A transaction was definitely a good possibility, we just could not get to this level of valuation using a realistic Xtandi model and thus could not recommend the stock. The only way for us to get to $81.50 (or even to $60-$70/share) would have been to assign very significant value to talazoparib. And we could not do that given the amount of available clinical evidence.Medivation shareholders who held on to their shares past the $50′s, did just that, were proven right and are now rewarded for it, since they believed that someone would be willing to pay for this asset just months ahead of Phase III data. The key question is why would a company be willing to part with what they claim/think may be a multibillion dollar drug that works in multiple cancers. We believe the obvious answer is because they’re smart and understand drug development risk better than most. We’ll know in a matter of months whether Pfizer/Medivation is like Amgen (AMGN)-Onyx (carfilzomib) or not.

  • [By Ben Levisohn]

    Medivation (MDVN) has soared 20% to $80.41 after agreeing to be purchased for $14 billion, or $81.50 a share, by Pfizer (PFE). Pfizer has declined 0.7% to $34.75.

Best Biotech Stocks To Watch Right Now: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.(ALNY)

Advisors’ Opinion:

  • [By Cory Renauer]

    Treating diseases that have a genetic component by altering the expression of the responsible genes is a promising new field of medicine, but it has been much less straightforward than biopharmaceutical companies had expected. Two contenders in this area, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) and Ionis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IONS), saw a mix of setbacks and success in 2016.

  • [By Brian Orelli]

    Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) jumped as much as 14.5% today after announcing earnings after the bell yesterday. As a development-stage biotech, it wasn’t the revenue or the earnings that caused the spike, but the progression of Allnylam’s pipeline.

  • [By Lisa Levin]

    Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALNY) shares shot up 53 percent to $114.87 after the company impressed investors with encouraging data from a phase 3 clinical trial. Alnylam, a company dedicated towards treating a wide range of debilitating diseases through ribonucleic acid (RNA) interference (RNAi) therapeutics, said after Tuesday's market close that a phase 3 study called APOLLO met its primary efficacy endpoint and all secondary endpoints.

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