ImmunoGen and Juno

I own some ImmunoGen (IMGN) and some Juno Therapeutics (JUNO), both of which are small (under 1%) parts of my portfolio, since they are development-stage companies.

Yesterday I had my article on ImmunoGen published at Seeking Alpha:

ImmunoGen Oversold Despite Strong Pipeline

Yesterday Juno announced it had a trial suspended due to the deaths of 2 cancer patients. I had talked about that risk in my earlier Seeking Alpha article:

Juno Therapeutics: Celgene Partnership and CAR-T Pipeline Value

In one sense the market is overreacting to the news, but then Juno has quite a high market capitalization for a company that does not have approvable Phase 3 results for a therapy yet ($3 billion today, $4 billion yesterday).

ImmunoGen has a very small market cap, just above its cash balances, as I explained in my article. While considerable risk is certainly involved, the bounce to the small cap should be much bigger, if a therapy is approved, than the bounce to a company that already has success figured into its larger cap.

Most of my portfolio is in large cap biotechs that have large cash flows and extensive pipelines, like Gilead (GILD), Amgen (AMGN), Biogen (BIIB) and Celgene (CELG).

I own quite a few small cap and even nano-cap stocks, but only one makes up a substantial part of my portfolio at present, Inovio (INO). That is because I bought a lot of INO cheap before other investors discovered it. I am of course hoping ImmunoGen will give my portfolio a similar boost. But keep in mind it took years for INO to get to where it is today.

My typical investment horizon is 3 to 5 years. Most investors, whether individuals or institutions, don't seem to be able to think that far ahead. It works for me.

Keep Diversified!

You can see all my business writing at www.openicon.com

Sold my Bind Therapeutics.

I sold my Bind Therapeutics (BIND) stock today after it went up on the news that Pfizer will make an offer to buy its assets. The problem is that, as I read it, Pfizer won't buy the debts, and there will not be money for continuing operations once the debt is paid. The potential upside is that some other company will outbid Pfizer. This is within the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. I think its technology should be worth more, especially given that it has several drugs using it that are being developed by large pharma companies that will owe substantial milestones and royalties if successful.

I lost money on Bind, so I am glad it only made up a small portion of my portfolio. I continue to own a number of small, risky biotechnology stocks. On the whole I have done well with this type of pick, but BIND now joins a small group of picks I took large % losses on, including DVIN and ANSV. And although I made money on DNDN by getting in early and then getting mostly out when it went high, in the end stockholders lost everything.

Reminder to myself and all:

Keep Diversified