Stock Commentary - New York week to April 13, 2009

NEW YORK: equities gyrated wildly in the holiday-shortened week to April 13, slumping at the start of the period on worries about the outlook for  first quarter results However, there was a surge of 3.1% in the Dow  Jones on April 9, taking the index back over the 8,000 level. Sentiment  was helped by the first batch of figures looking positive.  Pharmaceutical and biotechnology stocks were mixed, with 17 of those  tracked rising and 19 falling.

However, the biggest gains to be seen were not among drug majors, all of  which, barring Abbott Laboratories, up 2.4%, saw week-on-week declines.  The latter was one of the first in the sector to produce first-quarter  results (see page 5), but this was too late to impact on its share  movement for the reporting period. Par Pharma shot up 17.7%, helped by  the news that its subsidiary Strativa had submitted a New Drug  Application for generic Zofran (ondansetron) orally-dissolving film  strips (see page 21). King Pharma, which rose 12.6%, benefited from  being added to the recommended list of Goldman Sacks analyst Shibani  Malhotra, who anticipates Food and Drug Administration approval by  mid-year of the firm's Embeda, a pharmacological abuse-deterrent,  extended-release morphine product candidate under development by its  subsidiary Alpharma. This is despite concerns that the FDA is reluctant  to clear opioid painkillers (see page 12). She put the stock on her  conviction buy list, with a price targe of $10. Embeda combines an  extended-release opioid agonist with sequestered naltrexone, an opioid  antagonist. When the Embeda capsule is crushed, chewed or dissolved,  which are common approaches abusers use to tamper with the product in  order to gain euphoria, the naltrexone is released thereby  significantly reducing the euphoric effect of the opioid. Going the  other way was Vivus, which fell 10.5%, having seen some really wide  swings over the past few weeks. Celgene was down for a second week,  falling another 3.2% following a downgrade from analysts at Zacks  Investment Research. Biogen Idec saw a great deal of activity, ending up  5.8%, as the firm continued to reject billionaire investor Carl Icahn's  board nominations and rumors of a takeover bid from French drug major  Sanofi-Aventis.