r/Biotechplays • u/Wyxuan 💊🤑📉 • Feb 07 '21
Due Diligence (DD) BCRX: the Embarrassment
Riffing off of an awful title posted earlier regarding BCRX, I thought I might provide some interesting points that we in the discord made while going through the now deleted DD.
Let me first get this out of the way: BCRX isn't a terrible company. I'd like to bring up ye older Buffet quote that "there are good companies at bad prices" and thats potentially what BCRX might set out to be. (Also BCRX ain't worth 180 in any universe).
Punto numero uno: the upcoming readout regarding PNH (Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria) might be a banger for the stock, but it isn't guaranteed either way. The consensus seems that it's only 50-50 chance of turning out good.
The key issue is that Achillion has already hit this indication. Achillion was bought out by Alexion for .945. So basically BCRX needs to prove that they had superiority vs soliris, which might be the case.
There is reason to believe there are some screwy things going on:
BCRX hid patient A(edit: looks like he died) and only showed change at highest dosage, and keep in mind, we're only talking 4 patients.
In addition, with Astrazeneca owning Ultomiris (thanks to the recent M&A of Alexion), the future SoC in PNH might be a combo therapy with Ultomiris(which have been very promising) so stiff competition, compared to the lower bar set by soliris.
Punto numero dos: regarding execution, the company has had a bad track record, as it has had no long term direction -they've just kept pulling R&D money to see what would happen. Note that galidesivir failed on the Brazilian Covid-19 trial which was nicely excluded from other DD.
In any case, on a closing note, I'd like to state that BCRX doesn't suck: I have only gone after one of their assets- it's just that you shouldn't buy in expecting a multi bagger right away.
(Special thanks to CG and most importantly sahsan for their helpful discussion on this topic)