Alnylam Initiates Clinical Trial, SPDR S&P Biotech Mid-Caps Plunge Anyway
Jack Frost Nips XBI's Nose, Large- and Mid-Caps Feel the Burn
XBI mid-caps dive by 2.1%
On December 17, 2015, the mid-cap stocks of the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) went down by 2.1%, underperforming XBI itself and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which gave returns of -1.1% and -1.5%, respectively. As of December 17, XBI holds 29 mid-cap stocks in its portfolio.
Out of the 29 mid-cap stocks in XBI, only four gave positive returns—25 of XBI’s mid-cap stocks gave negative returns on December 17. The mid-cap stocks account for ~30.7% of XBI’s portfolio. Other mid-cap stocks in XBI include Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS, formerly known as ISIS), Juno Therapeutics (JUNO), and Kite Pharma (KITE), which gave returns of -1.95%, -3.5%, and -3.95%, respectively.
The above graph reflects the performance of XBI’s mid-cap stocks compared with SPY and XBI as of December 17. Since the beginning of December 2015, XBI mid-cap stocks managed to outperform SPY and XBI with a return of -1.35%, compared to XBI’s -4.25% and SPY’s -1.75%.
Alnylam initiates clinical trial, stock falls by 4%
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY) went down by 4.1%. According to its press release, Alnylam announced that it “initiated the final phase (Part C) of its Phase 1/2 clinical trial with ALN-CC5, a subcutaneously administered investigational RNAi therapeutic targeting complement component C5 for the treatment of complement-mediated diseases.”
The company expects to report initial PNH patient data from this ongoing clinical study of ALN-CC5 in mid-2016 and to initiate Phase 3 studies in 2017.
Stock activity
However, investors did not appear excited, possibly because of the time consumption factor in carrying out the clinical trials. In any case, the stock saw some selling off and went down by 4.1% on December 17. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY) closed at $88.18 and was trading below its 20-, 50-, and 100-day moving averages. YTD (year-to-date), ALNY has returned -9%.
ALNY has a book value of $15.6 per share. With its current price, the stock is trading at a PBV (price-to-book value) of 5.65x. ALNY has a weight of ~1.1% in XBI’s portfolio.
Now let’s look at what happened in XBI’s small-cap camp on December 17, 2015.
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