Amgen Gained as CVS Sealed the Deal to Sell Repatha
IBB Continued to Surge as Biotech Stocks Gained
IBB’s large caps gain marginally
The large-cap stocks of the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB) gained marginally with a return of 0.3% on November 23, 2015, and underperformed the IBB, but outperformed the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which gave a return of -0.1%. The large caps account for ~69.4% of IBB’s portfolio. Out of 15 large-cap stocks, five ended up in the red and ten large-cap stocks gave positive returns. IBB’s large caps include stocks like Shire (SHPG), Alexion Pharmaceuticals (ALXN), and Grifols (GRFS), which gave returns of -0.15%, 1.4%, and 0.1%, respectively.
The above graph reflects the performance of IBB’s large-cap stocks in comparison with IBB and SPY. Since the beginning of November 2015, IBB’s large-cap stocks have underperformed IBB and outperformed SPY. IBB’s large-cap stocks gave an average return of 1.1% while IBB returned 3.4%, and SPY returned 0.65%.
Amgen gained as CVS sealed the deal to sell Repatha
Amgen (AMGN) went up by 1.6% on the news that Repatha will be the only PCSK9-inhibitor on the CVS Health (CVS) commercial formularies. As per the press release, AMGN announced, “CVS Health will provide preferred access to Repatha (evolocumab) through its CVS/Caremark commercial formularies.”
AMGN closed at $162.47 and was trading at 3.9% above its 100-day moving average of $156.45. The stock also witnessed high trading volumes with ~4.1 million shares being traded as compared to the five-day average trading volume of ~2.75 million shares per day. With an RSI (relative strength index) of 56, the stock is neither overbought nor oversold. AMGN’s trailing-12-month price-to-earnings stood at 19.39x. AMGN’s book value per share is $37.05 and with the current price, the stock is trading at a price-to-book value of 4.39x. AMGN has a weight of ~8.6% in IBB’s portfolio.
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