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Biotech / Medical : PFE (Pfizer) How high will it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Albert Martin who wrote (7535)4/27/1999 9:02:00 PM
From: VLAD  Respond to of 9523
 
Albert,

I heard Bob Pissonme talking about the continued Pfizer sell off this pm on CNBC. He mentioned three factors 1)Poor Viagra sales 2)Questionable Q2 earnings 3)He claimed that the traders told him that the major factor was the split. He said that the fund managers didn't want to be holding on to three times the shares they had before with the current rich valuation of Pfizer stock and many want to be the first out the door.

He didn't mention it but the institutions IMO already know about the horrific safety profile of Viagra. With 577 Viagra linked deaths through mid February and counting, sooner or later the press will start spinning the safety profile history and its not going to be pretty. The trader mentality is to sell now and buy back cheaper when it stops going down. IMO wait for the next Peabrain gutter to buy.



To: Albert Martin who wrote (7535)4/28/1999 12:05:00 AM
From: BigKNY3  Respond to of 9523
 
Seven-Country Market for Therapies to Treat Erectile Dysfunction Will Approach $4 Billion by 2008, Reports Decision Resources, Inc.




April 27, 1999



WALTHAM, Mass., April 26 /PRNewswire/ via NewsEdge Corporation -- In 1998, erectile dysfunction (ED) affected more than 75 million men in the world's seven major pharmaceutical markets (the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Japan), and prevalence is expected to exceed 90 million in 2008. The 1998 approval of Pfizer's Viagra, the first oral therapy approved for the treatment of ED, has revolutionized the ED treatment market by stimulating a dramatic rise in both the diagnosed and drug-treated populations of ED sufferers. Viagra also catapulted sales of erectile dysfunction therapies into the stratosphere, more than quadrupling the size of the ED market in just one year. Although Viagra addresses nearly all of the needs of the ED patient population, opportunity does exist for new, fast-acting, oral pharmacotherapies with greater specificity and minimal side effects.






To: Albert Martin who wrote (7535)4/28/1999 12:18:00 AM
From: BigKNY3  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 9523
 
Albert: PFE is going through its typical profit-taking after hitting its lifetime high of 150.13 on 4/12/99. The target Valley is anywhere from 113 to 121 based on past historical PFE trends. Any purchases in this range should prove to be a great buy by May or early June.

The current negative sentiment on Big Pharma is best expressed by James Cramer on Street.Com.

BigKNY3

Bidding Farewell to Drugs
By James J. Cramer

4/26/99 12:07 PM ET
Here's a Cramer Berkowitz first: We own no drug stocks. What few we had got sold by Berko while I was away. And there is not an ounce of recrimination from me for that move. What happened to the drug stocks, which have been my fave for so long?

They are the casualty of the worldwide recovery. There is just so much nonindex money out there buying stocks, and that money has to sell something to buy other things. The something in this case is the drugs. I cannot emphasize enough how important this "source of funds" type of thinking is. These days, the only way big mutual funds can beat the market is to sell a large S&P sector that they think may underperform and buy sectors they think will do better than the index. The drugs are a natural underperformer in a world where the economy is improving, not getting worse or in crisis.

Can you bet against this new consensus? I don't think it's worth it to second-guess such a rotation. There are lots of secular reasons why the drugs make sense to sell. The federal government is sick of paying high prices for drugs. The competition among the drug companies has never been as intense (for the longest time, only Merck (MRK:NYSE) and Pfizer (PFE:NYSE) seemed like class acts, but now everybody seems like one, even the Upjohns (PNU:NYSE) and the Warner-Lamberts (WLA:NYSE), which means there is too much competition).
These are weak-dollar stocks, and the dollar is getting stronger, not weaker, especially vs. the euro. And if you can buy drugs on the Net, soon the buying power will go to the Net buyers (drugstore.com, etc.) vs. the cozy drug oligopoly. (We saw this happen once before, when Medco (MRE:NYSE) and its compadres used to pit the drug companies against each other. But then the drug companies bought these mail-order competitors and wiped out the competition.) Don't underestimate the power of Bezos & Co. to dictate pricing on the chronically prescribed drugs. It will happen. Of course, some of the drug stocks will get to be too cheap and will be good for a trade. But it will be for a trade only as far as I am concerned.

What would change things for me? Not much. Pfizer and Merck both had not-so-hot quarters. They won't report new quarters for three months. That might be a good time to look again. No Y2K worries and a summer slowdown in tech might make them seem terrific.
Talk to me in July.

James J. Cramer is manager of a hedge fund and co-founder of TheStreet.com.