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Biotech / Medical : Biogen -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SDR-SI who wrote (830)	1/10/1999 3:17:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Respond to of 1686

earnings out this thu ... Health-Care Shares to Be in Spotlight as H&Q Holds Conference San Francisco, Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Health-care stocks will be in the spotlight next week as hundreds of companies give presentations at a Hambrecht & Quist conference for investors, the largest annual meeting of its type. Investors will meet with executives of the world's largest biotech companies -- including Amgen Inc., Biogen Inc. and Genentech Inc. -- along with smaller biotech firms like Icos Corp., Transkaryotic Inc. and Coulter Pharmaceutical Inc. Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co., health insurers like Oxford Health Plans Inc., WellPoint Health Networks Inc. are also scheduled to attend, along with medical device makers like Visx Inc. and fledgling health-care Internet companies drugstore.com Inc. and Healtheon Corp. Biotech and drug stocks tend to rise before and during the conference because companies sometimes wait to release good news so they can discuss it directly with investors at the meeting. The H&Q conference is usually about a month after another high- profile meeting held by BancBoston Robertson Stephens. "If you buy (the biotech) group before the Robbie Stephens conference and you sell it at the end of the H&Q conference, you've probably done very well," said Stephen Flaks of Flaks Partners LP, whose $70 million portfolio gained 56 percent last year. Medical devices makers like Guidant Corp. and St. Jude Medical Inc. will also present at the conference. Pressure from Insurers Investors are likely to ask executives of those companies whether they expect health insurers to start pressuring them to control costs of their products, as they have been doing with drugmakers. "The concerns are growing about payers and cost controls," H&Q analyst Robert Faulkner said. Among the companies presenting: -- Biogen Inc., maker of the multiple sclerosis treatment Avonex, in a presentation on Tuesday may give investors an advance peek at fourth-quarter results, which it will release on Thursday. It give the company a chance for its Chairman and new CEO James Vincent to talk with investors after last month's sudden resignation of former CEO James Tobin. -- Aviron, which is working to bring its nasal flu vaccine to market, is yet to announce a partnership with a major pharmaceutical company to promote that product, dubbed FluMist. The company could make such an announcement at the meeting. -- McKesson Corp. will address the conference on Thursday, a day after the expected closure of the drug wholesaler's acquisition of software maker HBO & Co. It may update earnings forecast for the new company. Immunex's Arthritis Drug -- Immunex Corp. CEO Edward Fritzky will likely discuss the introduction of Enbrel, a rheumatoid arthritis treatment that's the biotech company's first major product. The company is yet to release sales figures on the drug, which won Food and Drug Administration approval on Nov. 2. -- Genentech Inc. Chief Executive Arthur Levinson will likely update investors on the introduction of Herceptin, a breast-cancer drug that won FDA approval on Sept. 25. -- Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., a developer of drugs for immune-and central-nervous-system diseases, may disclose a major drug-development partnership with a big drugmaker, said Flaks, whose $75 million biotech fund holds shares in the company. While Neurocrine won't present at the meeting, company executives were invited to attend the conference.