MedImmune Heats Up
By MOHAMMED HADI
February 16, 2007; [WSJ] Page C7
Driven by one part good news and one part wishful thinking, trading in shares and call options of drug developer MedImmune Inc. was heavy yesterday.
Shares of the Gaithersburg, Md., company jumped $1.91, or 6.1%, to $33.16 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The company said a study in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that children under 5 years old who were immunized with MedImmune's FluMist showed 55% fewer cases of the flu than those given flu shots. Also, billionaire Carl Icahn reported a stake of 2.8 million shares in the company, seen as an endorsement of its potential.
With this in mind, traders rushed in to buy options on MedImmune, noted Paul Foster, who tracks options for theflyonthewall.com. Slightly more than 31,200 call options on the stock changed hands in the session, according to Track Data.
Trading was heaviest in options that give the right to buy MedImmune shares for $35, about 5.5% higher than where they closed yesterday. Slightly fewer than 14,000 of these changed hands, compared with 7,163 previously outstanding.
Puts on MedImmune also were active, with more than 9,900 trading. Again, the focus was in those contracts that don't expire until March; in this case, March 32.50 puts.
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