Look back at news to July 28

In terms of volume, last week’s news was dominated by dozens of second-quarter earnings reports from pharma and biotech companies. However, overshadowing these was the big blow to AstraZeneca, which on Thursday reported that the much anticipate Mystic trial of its new cancer drug candidate Imfinzi had failed in its goals, which wiped  about £10 billion off the company’s market capitalization. Other headline hitting stories included Celgene’s results, Eli Lilly’s collaboration with Nektar Therapeutics, and Samsung Bioepis and Merck & Co’s approval of a Remicade biosimilar Renflexis.

AstraZeneca’s share price collapse was eased slightly on Friday, when the stock gained 3.6% to£44.82, after chief executive Pascal Soriot hosted a sellside analysts’ breakfast meeting, which bolstered confidence that investors had been hasty in writing off a flagship cancer treatment, reported the Financial Times.

Imfinzi’s failure was “unhelpful, but discounting the project’s complete demise (which is what the market now appears to be doing) is premature and imbalanced,” said Société Générale quoted by the FT, whose target on the stock was £80. “We also believe that extrapolating this news to dividend sustainability is unfair.” Also saying that Thursday’s 15% decline as an overreaction were Citgroup, Kepler Cheuvreux and Merrill Lynch.

AstraZeneca pipeline woes