Rosemary,
Be careful about that end of July date, if you read the press release,
biz.yahoo.com
they give themselves two weeks wiggle room, pushing it into August. And have you ever known a biotech to report before the end of the range?
IMO, this is negative news, beyond the fact that the mkt will take it as such. Two points:
1) You would have thought that the co. would have learned about delaying expectations after the earlier delays in trials. Therefore IMO either mgmt. has miscalculated or there was some problem with the data collection (even before data is unblinded, clerical problems or unclear outcomes can become apparent). As to the first possibility, enrollment was complete 3 1/2 months ago and given this lead time, I'm skeptical about the delay being b/c of scheduling difficulties w/ the independent panel; so did mgmt misguess the time to prep the data? As to the second possibility, does anyone know if this "adjudication panel" has been mentioned as a regular part of the protocol before? If not, IMHO this suggests that there may be some problem with the consistency of the data. I will try to check on whether this has been mentioned before (some clinical trials use such panels as part of the design, others do not).
2) If they already are missing deadlines, why should the market put any faith in their timeline on NDA submission? If there is not a problem with the data, this is the biggest downside to today. Remember this is the third time ABTI has disappointed the mkt with a delay.
All said, I remain long ABTI. This does go to explain the rise in short interest, though. While the data remains blinded, delays do not. It will be interesting to see if the shorts cover on this dip, or whether they feel there is more bad news still to be priced.
Jonathan, thanks for your response and lets hope the data is better than the timing.
biowa |
