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ASCO Reveals That Big Pharma Is Alive

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This weekend, the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) kicked off in Chicago. The theme this year? Immunotherapy. The conference is traditionally littered with news from biotech companies revealing results from clinical studies, but this year’s event also included some news from big phama companies that haven’t been bursting with pipeline breakthroughs in years. Let’s take a look at some of the news out of the event. Firms Highlighted: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Amgen, Galena Biopharma, BioMarin, Celgene. Bristol-Myers Squibb Source: BMY ASOC 2013 Presentation Bristol-Myers Squibb (click ticker for report: ) isn’t exactly what we’d call an under-appreciated company. Over the past year, shares are up 43%. However, this year’s ASCO only further ignited the fire. The company … Read more

Johnson & Johnson’s Long-term Tailwinds Are Intact

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Diversified medical and consumer products firm Johnson & Johnson (click ticker for report: ) reported solid fourth-quarter results Tuesday morning. Sales jumped 8% year-over-year to $17.6 billion, roughly in-line with consensus expectations. Earnings were slightly better than anticipated, growing 5.3% year-over-year to $1.19 per share—after adjusting for several special items. Johnson & Johnson’s international expansion outpaced its domestic growth, with international sales jumping 8.9% on a reported basis (11.2% excluding currency) while its domestic business grew 6.8%. The acquisition of Synthes was the big needle-mover in the period, as it was responsible for 5.6 percentage points of the total sales increase. For the year, the growth rate of the firm’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics’ segment exceeded that of other segments, though pharmaceutical results … Read more

Valuentum’s June Best Ideas Newsletter

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Image: Page 49, June edition of American Library Association Booklist.   By Brian Nelson, CFA — Welcome new members!   Roughly 90% of active management is underperforming their benchmarks, after fees, over the trailing 15-year period ending 2018. It’s a sad story out there. Most active investors are performing backward-looking analysis, others are using short-cut multiple analysis to make decisions; still, others may be continuing down the path of thinking that may have gotten active management in trouble in the first place: theoretical quantitative finance.   The bedrock of finance, for example, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and its beta have been shown to explain little about stock market returns, yet it is still in finance textbooks and still on key … Read more

ICYMI — Video: Will Hasty Policy Facilitate the Next Leg Down, or Do We Have It Coming Anyway?

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President of Investment Research and award-winning author of Value Trap: Theory of Universal Valuation Brian Nelson explains how US policymakers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and how the market may be factoring in too high of a probability of a return to normalcy before 2021. This and more in the latest video report. Summary Make sure you review Value Trap on Amazon. Do so here. We think those that bought equities near the bottom of this swoon may be looking to take profits at present levels. The market is currently reflecting an 80%-85% probability of a return to normalcy before 2021, which we believe is too high at this time. Our main concern is that government … Read more