From Briefing:
MONSANTO CO. (MTC) 46 11/16 +1 13/16. Life sciences company continues to ride the positive wave from its arthritis drug Celebrex as the stock continues to rebound from recent lows that saw the stock trade under $34. Yesterday, the company reported that Celebrex was off to one of the fastest sales starts of any pharmaceutical product, prompting the stock to surge by more than 9%. The stock seems to have received another boost from NBC's Dateline news show last night which also featured the drug. Thus, Monsanto is again riding the gravy train, although this could be short lived given that Merck & Co. (MRK 144 13/16 +13/16) has received limited approval for its own arthritis drug, Vioxx. The latter drug could take some of the shine away from Celebrex since patients are only required to take one instead of two pills a day for relief. Like Celebrex, Vioxx works well against inflammation without producing bleeding ulcers and other stomach irritations. And the kicker for Vioxx is that it will probably have a wider range of approval for the relief of pain than Celebrex. This is not to say that Celebrex won't be a winner on its own right. However, with Merck likely to hit the market with its new arthritis drug sometime in the first half of the year, Monsanto needs to widen its lead as much as possible to take away any gains that are likely to accumulate towards Vioxx due to its broader application. With arthritis sales of at least $5 billion projected to be generated over the next three years, the stakes are high, but one in which both companies should be able to carve out a nice living from.
|
