Amgen shares jump on bone-cancer drug trial results
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Amgen Inc. investors got good news late Tuesday on trial results for one of the Thousand Oaks company’s potential blockbuster drugs.
From Reuters:
Amgen said its experimental osteoporosis drug reduced and delayed serious bone complications among patients with advanced breast cancer, and the news sent its shares up almost 13% in after-hours trade. The biotechnology company said its drug, denosumab, proved superior to Novartis AG’s Zometa in a late-stage study. Bone metastases, or the spread of cancer to the bone, are a serious consequence of breast cancer, weakening or destroying bone around the tumor. The Phase 3 study assessed the incidence of serious bone complications among 2,049 such patients, including fractures, or the need for radiation or surgery to bone.
The report was issued after regular market hours. Amgen’s shares, which inched up 18 cents to $52.23 in regular trading, jumped to $59 in after-hours activity, the highest since early January.
UPDATE: The stock was up $8.41 to $60.64 in early trading Wednesday.
Amgen has a lot riding on denosumab, as the company faces depressed sales of its arthritis drug Enbrel and of its longtime cash cows, the anti-anemia drugs Aranesp and Epogen.
The company still is highly profitable, but first-quarter earnings were down 8% from a year earlier, to $1.02 billion. Revenue was off 8.4% to $3.3 billion.
‘Amgen’s entire story right now is denosumab in cancer,’ analyst Eric Schmidt at Cowen & Co. said in a Bloomberg News interview last month. ‘Everybody on Wall Street is waiting now to see if denosumab can deliver.’
-- Tom Petruno