Progenics jumped. Should you?

By M.E.Garza

Thursday, 01 December 2011 04:17

Shares of Progenics Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:PGNX) gapped up and ran on Wednesday, but a scan for news or new information about the company turned up nothing. Even traders on various message boards seemed to be wondering why the stock jumped 20.86%.

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PGNX lead all health care equities- and closed at $6.72 +1.16; with a trading volume at almost 250% higher than usual. In fact, Progenics shares out-ranked a market sector full of impressive climbers including Metabolix, Inc.(NASDAQ:MBLX) which jumped 19.30% to $4.76, Sangamo Biosciences (NASDAQ:SGMO) whose shares moved +18.36% to $3.03, and Cornerstone Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CRTX) which closed at $5.84 +0.85 (17.03%), but why?

From time to time, shares of this particular biotech have been known to jump big on no news, but this move in perticular calls attention to the company from a technical standpoint because shares have moved above the 200 day moving average once again. Biotech trend traders may want to keep an eye on the stock to see if this is just another leg in a repeating trend or whether this could be the start of a break-out.

Twice before, most recently in late October and early November, the stock had jumped over the same technical hurdle only to lose steam. If it does the same this time, then you'll have a great stock to surf the wave on (click on the chart below to read the details).

Progenics' clinical programs are focused on gastroenterology, virology, and oncology. Its Relistor® is used for the treatment of opioid-induced constipation and a look through the BioMedReports FDA Calendar does show a related milestone that we are tracking for 2012.

In late August, Progenics and one of their partners, Salix Pharmaceuticals, announced that the FDA had accepted for filing a supplemental New Drug Application for Relistor Subcutaneous Injection to treat opioid-induced constipation (OIC) in patients with non-cancer pain. The FDA has issued a PDUFA action date of April 27, 2012, but it's hard to imagine that a forward looking date that far in advance would have caused the stock to move this much during the previous session.

Of course, we all know that hepatitis C virus stocks have been on a bullish run lately and some note that Progenics' product pipeline includes a treatment for HCV infections. In reality, the firm is is only evaluating the second-generation HCV-entry inhibitors as possible drug development candidate at the pre-clinical level. And the last time we even heard it mentioned was in a 10-Q filing a coiuple of years ago (11/09/2009).

In either case, we note that 70.70% of the company's 38M shares are actually owned by institutional buyers.

Much of the firm's loyal or otherwise "smart money" investors (who, by the way, love some of the latest reported sales figures) don't seem to care for "the swing traders who come in and out." But at this point, we'd watchlist this one for any news and try to catch the next wave, but only after seeing it form more clearly.

Disclosure: None

BiomedReports is not paid or compensated to report news and developments about publicly traded companies. Full disclosure can be read in the About Us Section

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