Diamonds and Dogs

6/28/16

Turnaround Tuesday. The first up day since the Brexit vote was good, not great. Biotechs were one of the better performing sectors up nearly 4% today. Gilead Science (GILD) is the diamond of the day up 5% after the FDA approved Gilead's latest hepatitis C pill, which the company priced significantly lower than its previous drugs. The drug, Epclusa, improves upon Gilead's previous drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni in that it treats all six major genotypes of the hepatitis C virus (HCV), both enlarging the market and eliminating the need for genotype testing. For most patients, the regime is one pill a day for 12 weeks, although patients with decompensated cirrhosis (i.e. very advanced liver disease) must take it with ribavirin, a standard generic HCV medicine.

ComScore (SCOR) did not score today. The only thing worse than the Brexit vote is an internal accounting audit problem. ComScore tumbled 18% making a new 52 week low after the company missed a self-imposed deadline to provide an update on its ongoing audit of certain accounting issues. The company delayed filing its annual report and quarterly report for the first quarter back in February giving the Audit Committee time to conduct a review of the problems. On May 11, comScore filed a form with the SEC stating that the investigation was nearly complete, and that it planned to provide an informed update by June 27. Today the company filed another report telling the SEC that the Audit Committee required more time to evaluate the collected information and draw final conclusions. Not good news.