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Biotech / Medical : XOMA. Bull or Bear? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: opalapril who wrote (8526)	1/28/1999 11:47:00 PM
From: aknahow	Respond to of 17367

Another reason for legal action and for reading tsc at thestreet.com Yes it's from an Eisinger article written today. If XOMA insist on holding back information from shareholders while directly or indirectly releasing it to others, because information is being published in a scientific journal that has a blackout or embargo prior to publication, I will take legal action, this is a threat. <g. Read this and see why I think such action makes sense and might have some chance of success. Until someone faces the music this sort of crap will go on and on. biotech stocks are risky, they require lots of patience and offer mainly disappointments. When there is finally good news, it is a real insult to those who have supported a company to create a situation where others reap the benefit first. " Slow Leak Immunex's (IMNX:Nasdaq) stock climbed 4 15/16 to 147 15/16 Wednesday in anticipation of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on the company's rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel. Of course, everybody on the Street had the article already and were faxing it to their buddies and the press. The journal published as its lead article a study on Enbrel in conjunction with methotrexate, a common rheumatoid arthritis drug. The data are out already and were used to garner Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, which came late last year. The drug is off to a spectacular start, selling at an annualized rate of over $150 million already, according to an estimate by ING Baring Furman Selz. But the fact that the study will be published in the most prestigious medical journal in the country -- and the lead article, no less -- is good for Immunex and its majority owner, American Home Products (AHP:NYSE). The companies' sales reps will be able to get into doctors' offices more easily brandishing the article. So how does Wall Street manage to make this happy arbitrage? The magazine has a widely ridiculed policy of embargoing the press on its publications. It gives copies a week in advance to media outlets in exchange for the promise that they don't publish anything until late Wednesday afternoon. Newspapers publish their stories on Thursday. (TSC does not receive an embargoed copy.) In the meantime, the issue is mailed to subscribers, many of whom are on Wall Street. They proceed to trade on the article, and the media has to sit tight. "It's embargoed till Thursday, but we get it on Monday. It's foolish the way they do that," says a hedge-fund manager, happily watching the stock rise." I am not saying XOMA plans to do this, but just a warning, that I will not be so delighted with good news, that I will not be really upset if they do something similar.