Monday, March 12, 2007

Amylin Pharma (AMLN)

The analyst at Thomas Weisel who covers Amylin Pharma (AMLN) is out with comments this afternoon concerning the company's Byetta diabetes medication. TWPT believes that IMS scrip data is showing sales of the drug (a derivative of gila monster saliva) are light for the 1st quarter. TWPT estimates sales of as low as $142 mln vs consensus estimates of $149 mln.

Personal experience: I am a severe diabetic. I can look at something sweet and my blood sugar level will go up (ok, that's exaggerating a bit). I tried Byetta for a while and it does lower blood glucose levels - just 10 units does the trick with that stuff. BUT it also can come with the side effect of severe nausea. I knew I had to stop using Byetta when I was driving out to Hershey, PA last fall and almost without warning had to pull the car off to the shoulder on I-78 and dash out and throw up over the guard rail, while the kids looked back and watched and my wife rolled her eyes and shook her head. LOL.

2 comments:

Tom Gallanis said...

I have been watching AMLN for quite some time. With inst.ownership at 85%+ I think the analysts out there are working for the brokerages, accumulating the stock. True, nausea is a proven side effect. But so is weight loss with this drug. Here is the script report today:
Bear Stearns Scrip[s
***BYETTA SCRIPTS UP FOR WEEK ENDING 3/2/07 (AFTER HOLIDAY WEEK). Byetta TRx
are up 12.4% week-over-week. 5mcg TRx are up 12.1% and 10mcg TRx are up 12.5%.
Est total pens dispensed were up 10.3%. The percentage increases are likely
due to the President's Day holiday in the prior week. However, 10mcg
prescriptions hit a weekly all-time high with nearly 39K TRx. While we are
encouraged by the strong data, we would gain more comfort with another week of
scripts at these levels to confirm the trend. This is the ninth week of data
in 1Q07.
***TRENDS SUGGEST 1Q07 SALES GROWTH COULD BE POSSIBLE. 10mcg TRx's are up
about 9% for the first 9 weeks of 1Q07 compared to the first 9 weeks of 4Q06.
A similar calculation for the 5mcg pens shows they are down ~14% (the
downtrend in 5mcg pens did not begin in earnest until the latter half of
4Q06). Our model suggests that our 1Q07 sales estimate of ~$139M is beatable
if scripts remain flat with week 9 of 1Q07 levels. We expect 10mcg scripts to
continue growing though we admit the timing of the sampling benefit is hard to
gauge.
***EXPECT SAMPLING PROGRAM TO CONTINUE. AMLN has said that distribution of
live samples in 4Q06 exceeded the total number of 5mcg prescriptions dispensed
(IMS says ~225K). We believe the pace of sampling increased as the quarter
progressed meaning that more samples were distributed in December rather than
November. While we believe the sampling program could continue, AMLN has also
noted it could take as long as a full quarter before sampled patients become
paying patients.
***MAINTAIN OUTPERFORM.. We believe our YE07 target of $49 is in line with our
thesis that AMLN represents a LT value that could prove volatile in the near
term. We believe accumulating the shares especially on weakness would be a
wise strategy for investors with a LT horizon.

Unknown said...

Themis, the weight loss was a great side effect, but I feel it was due to making me feel so nauseous that I didn;t care to eat much of anything. thanks for the full report. interesting stuff.