z,
found this in the news:
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares fell on
word that Doug Lind, an analyst at PaineWebber Inc. and chief champion
of the stock, was leaving the firm to go to Morgan Stanley Group Inc.
A source at Morgan Stanley confirmed that the analyst had started at
the firm Tuesday. Lind wasn't available to comment.
Agouron, which is poised to launch its AIDS drug Viracept, fell to a
low of $78 Tuesday before coming back. In afternoon trading, the stock
was off $4, or 4.7%, to $81 on 951,700 shares.
The stock has fallen dramatically in recent weeks from a high of $101
in mid-February as concerns about valuation set in. Short interest was
at about 1 million shares most recently. Agouron has a little more than
13 million shares outstanding.
PaineWebber led an Agouron stock offering in July at $30 a share. The
firm places a lot of stock in retail hands, unlike Morgan Stanley.
Investors fear that with an inevitable gap in coverage at PaineWebber,
the firm's support will wane.
Agouron is widely expected to get approval and launch Viracept in the
second quarter, though there is a sharp divide on Wall Street about how
the drug will do. The small biotech company will have to compete against
Merck & Co., whose Crixivan dominates the protease inhibitor market.
Protease inhibitors are a new class of AIDS drugs. Protease, an
enzyme, is believed to play an essential role in the replication of HIV.
When used in combination with some older drugs, protease inhibitors have
made HIV undetectable in the blood of some adults.
Crixivan, which is selling at an annualized rate of about $400
million, has about three-fourths of the protease inhibitor market,
analysts said. Agouron bulls have predicted that Viracept could garner
as much as a third of the protease inhibitor market, which some predict
could be $2.5 billion annually world-wide in five years.
The Analyst, not the analysis, is missing for the time being.
ps
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