Tuesday, June 23, 2015

United Therapeutics and GlycoMimetics

Going down the list of stocks in the IBB, my next stop was United Therapeutics (UTHR). I spent about a day doing research and wrote up my conclusions for Seeking Alpha:

United Therapeutics Appears Undervalued

I concluded I did not want to buy UTHR at the present time. Buying it a year ago would have been smart, but then a lot of biotech pharmaceutical companies are up a lot in the last year. Other investors may find it worthwhile. I concluded it was undervalued, which for most investors would make it a buy, but I just did not like the pipeline enough. Maybe later.

GlycoMimetics (GLYC) announced that its partner Pfizer had initiated the Phase 3 trial of Rivipansel for the treatment of vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) in patients hospitalized with sickle cell disease. That triggered a $20 million milestone payment. If you read this blog you may recall that I bought some GLYC back in March and April because the price seemed low because of a delay in getting the trial started. I bought at $8.59 and $8.36. Well the stock popped on the news today, up $0.95 to $8.79, so I am up only a tad. However, if the trial gets good results this is going to be a big winner, since the current market cap is only $167 million. Could go 10x or 100x in the next decade. On the other hand it is a micro-cap. Bad results in this trial could be a death sentence. Pick your poison.

All the more reason to:

Keep diversified.

Of course if you want to read the detailed notes I keep on stocks I own or am thinking of acquiring you can find a list at OpenIcon.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Inovio Interview, AMD Buy

I spoke at length to Dr. Joseph Kim, CEO of Inovio (INO) on Friday the 12th, about dMAb (DNA monoclonal antibody) technology.

dMAb showed promise in mice and is about to enter its first human tests. Note that Inovio has several clinical trials completed for its DNA vaccines, and may advance to its first Phase 3 trial later this year.

You can find my explanation of dMAb and its potential at Seeking Alpha:

Inovio's dMAb Technology [June 17, 2015]

I am hoping to resume my extension of coverage to more biotechnology companies by working my way through the IBB holdings, but I cannot promise when the next report will appear. Follow me at Seeking Alpha or here to keep up.

After watching AMD's presentation yesterday of its new graphics cards I considerably enlarged my AMD holdings. I like the new memory technology, but I do wish they had gone ahead and jumped to 20 nm or 16 nm technology. AMD looks cheap right now, but it could go down further short term because Q2 results are likely to be pretty bad. However, with the introduction of Windows 10 and the new graphics cards and the usual back-to-school and run up to the holidays, I expect Q3 will make AMD look a lot better. We won't know, of course, until October.

Keep in mind that I don't recommend stocks. One thing I do is technology journalism, and I disclose my own investing so readers can know what biases I might have. (I own Inovio too).

Keep diversified!

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Marvell Technology FLC story

Marvell Technology: Can FLC Return It to Growth? [June 2, 2015, Seeking Alpha]

This may be a "Boy who cried wolf" story. FLC (final-level cache) may be the next big thing in computers, or at least increase Marvell (MRVL) market share for controller chips by 25% of more, but I just can't get excited about it at this point.

Still, Marvell and its FLC technology are worth watching. I like to think long-term, but Marvell's poor performance over the past decade is one of the reasons I have shifted my portfolio to mostly biotechnology stocks.