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Market renewed confidence in Merck pipeline?

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Anonymous

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I noticed Merck stock pointing up lately, especially after Boceprevir announcement. Is Wall Street changing its mind about Merck pipeline? Are we really doing better thanks to our enligthened managers? Or is this just another lucky bump before the cliff? Would appreciate comments from anybody in a position to know better. Thanks.
 






Stock was not doing well. The Merck board and the CEO decided to spend extra cash in buying back some stocks. It creates a perception of confidence. Stock price is up. CEO looks good. Time to claim he is responsible and ask for a raise.
 








Big unknown will be the future "good cholesterol" drug and the about-to-be-approved boceprevir. HCV Program will be to identify as many victims and carriers as possible and the battle will be to get a majority of them to therapy. Insurance and government will fight this creation of a patient pool as much as possible since there is good evidence that being a carrier is not the same thing as being an inevitiable victim. A course of therapy for HCV could very well top $50,000. The rest of the pipeline is weak relative to the size of the company. Losing TRA compound was a real blow. Since Merck has stopped providing periodic advice to investors reading anything more into the pipeline is that much more of a guess. Keeping a good portion of Remicade franchise is good news. Failure to secure market share for Boceprevir will be taken very badly by investors. Wall Street believes that we can really sell this stuff.
 




















It's only because Merck bought back some of their stock.... Schering did the same right before the merger... And you begin to see what can happen - there is a reason for everything
 








Sell now if you can, 38-40 is excellent. It would be foolish to hope for more in the near term. Price are inflated because of the buy back program. If you are counting on Peter Kim, Rich Tillyer, Luciano...and others leaders in R&D to improve the pipeline, you are essentially dreaming. They are incompetent and have not build a competitive pipeline in the last 9 years, why would it happen now? Innovations are still inadequate and future plans lackluster.

A company like Merck having to buy a smaller company like Schering-Plough through a reverse merger to boost its pipeline can't be said to be a tiger in R&D. Worse still, they were not competent enough to see that the TRA antagonist could be a bust, to find out after a year or so that it is indeed a bust, and buying SP was a waste of money and drag on the company.

If I am wrong about the prospect of Merck R&D please somebody tell me.
 












Anonymous said:
Big unknown will be the future "good cholesterol" drug and the about-to-be-approved boceprevir. HCV Program will be to identify as many victims and carriers as possible and the battle will be to get a majority of them to therapy. Insurance and government will fight this creation of a patient pool as much as possible since there is good evidence that being a carrier is not the same thing as being an inevitiable victim. A course of therapy for HCV could very well top $50,000. The rest of the pipeline is weak relative to the size of the company. Losing TRA compound was a real blow. Since Merck has stopped providing periodic advice to investors reading anything more into the pipeline is that much more of a guess. Keeping a good portion of Remicade franchise is good news. Failure to secure market share for Boceprevir will be taken very badly by investors. Wall Street believes that we can really sell this stuff.
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You will be lucky to see the good cholesterol product by 2016-2017 which in this business is forever and getting it out with no more bad events by then is a big if.
 








Anonymous said:
The pipeline is a mess
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That is because R&D is so horrible. They are the laughing stock of the pharmaceutical industry. I am sure I am going to get, “Whaaa whaa whaaa, you don’t know what we do and how hard we work” by those overpaid morons. Then they will write “Whaaa whaa whaaa , you would be fired in week if you tried to do our job” or “Whaaa whaa whaaa, it’s not our fault we suck so bad, it because”. Simple, pipeline sucks and who is to blame? Is it:

A. R&D
B. The middle east peace process
C. Solar flares



When they get laid off, no one is going to break down their door for a job. That is why Merck need to perform all these joint ventures with other companies. It’s to hide the incompetence and overall uselessness of the R&D teams they have. I heard the Merck R&D teams tried to bring penicillin to market last week. They called it a new drug.
 




Anonymous said:
That is because R&D is so horrible. They are the laughing stock of the pharmaceutical industry. I am sure I am going to get, “Whaaa whaa whaaa, you don’t know what we do and how hard we work” by those overpaid morons. Then they will write “Whaaa whaa whaaa , you would be fired in week if you tried to do our job” or “Whaaa whaa whaaa, it’s not our fault we suck so bad, it because”. Simple, pipeline sucks and who is to blame? Is it:

A. R&D
B. The middle east peace process
C. Solar flares



When they get laid off, no one is going to break down their door for a job. That is why Merck need to perform all these joint ventures with other companies. It’s to hide the incompetence and overall uselessness of the R&D teams they have. I heard the Merck R&D teams tried to bring penicillin to market last week. They called it a new drug.
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ouch, 100% true but ouch anyway.
 




Merck just teamed up with Roche to sell HCV drug combination including boceprevir. May be a bit of good news here. If Merck can minimize Vertex share of the HCV market, we may make some money over boceprevir after all. I am not holding my breath over the cholesterol franchise, the CETP inhibitors in trials may flop the same way the TRA antag did. On the overall I don't see a gang buster pipeline for a company the size of Merck. Until they replace the leadership in R&D plus associated leeches, I don't see this company going anywhere. Prices are as good as they can be now, get rid of your stocks before it's too late.
 




Anonymous said:
Merck just teamed up with Roche to sell HCV drug combination including boceprevir. May be a bit of good news here. If Merck can minimize Vertex share of the HCV market, we may make some money over boceprevir after all. I am not holding my breath over the cholesterol franchise, the CETP inhibitors in trials may flop the same way the TRA antag did. On the overall I don't see a gang buster pipeline for a company the size of Merck. Until they replace the leadership in R&D plus associated leeches, I don't see this company going anywhere. Prices are as good as they can be now, get rid of your stocks before it's too late.
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This is analogous to Merck's introducing Vytorin to respond to Lipitor's superiority. More marketing garbage from Merck, nothing more. Tela is a better drug, plain and simple.
 




Anonymous said:
This is analogous to Merck's introducing Vytorin to respond to Lipitor's superiority. More marketing garbage from Merck, nothing more. Tela is a better drug, plain and simple.
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Agree! The alliance with Roche must have been an idea coming from legacy SP HCV marketing team. Legacy SP marketing was well known to be excellent, they can make a so so product smell like a rose. I don't know about Tela being a better product, it may be more potent, but the rash side effect is a real issue. Think about it, the choice treatment for HCV will be the triple combo interferon ribavirin and protease inhibitor. Interferon and ribavirin already make the patients sick and miserable with flu-like syndrome and anemia. Add Tela and you will get rash on top of the misery. I will take my chance with Bocep. At any rate time will tell.
 




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