Hot Biotech Companies To Buy For 2015

Hot Biotech Companies To Buy For 2015: Intercept Pharmaceuticals Inc (ICPT)

Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc., incorporated on September 4, 2002, is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of therapeutics to treat chronic liver diseases utilizing its bile acid chemistry.The Companys product candidates treat orphan and more prevalent liver diseases for which there are limited therapeutic solutions. The Companys product candidate, obeticholic acid, or OCA, is a bile acid analog, a chemical substance that has a structure based on a naturally occurring human bile acid. It is developing OCA initially for primary biliary cirrhosis, or PBC, as a second line treatment for patients who have an inadequate response to or who are unable to tolerate standard of care therapy and therefore need additional treatment. The Company is conducting a Phase 3 clinical trial of OCA in PBC, which it calls the POISE trial, that serves as the basis for seeking regulatory approval in the United States and Europe. As of December 19, 20 12, the Company completed enrollment of the POISE trial with 217 patients.

The Companys clinical focus is on the development of OCA, orally administered, first-in-class FXR agonist that has broad liver-protective properties and may a variety of chronic insults to the liver that cause fibrosis, which can eventually lead to cirrhosis, liver transplant and death. The Company owns worldwide rights to OCA outside of Japan and China, where it has licensed the compound to Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma, or DSP, and granted it an option to license OCA in certain other Asian countries.The Company is sponsoring an independent study involving more than ten leading PBC centers in North America and Europe, or collectively the Global PBC Study Group, that are pooling their long-term patient data to evaluate the relationship between biochemical and clinical endpoints.

The Company competes with Eli Lilly, Exelixis, Inc., Phenex Pharmaceuticals AG, ! , Johnson & Johnson , NovImmune SA, Dr. Falk Pharma GmbH, Galmed Medical Researc! h Ltd., Immuron Ltd., Mochida Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., NasVax Ltd. , Raptor Pharmaceutical Corp. Astellas Pharma US, Inc., AstraZeneca, Salix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Tioga Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Jayson Derrick]

  Intercept Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ICPT) priced its one million common share offering at $320 per share, below Thursday's closing price of $321.81. Additionally, in a 13G filing, Steven Cohen's hedge fund SAC Capital disclosed on Thursday night that it holds 6,123 shares in the company, down from its 1,369,046 shares the fund held at the end of the last quarter. Shares plunged 9.61 percent, closing at $290.89.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Sure Intercept Pharmaceuticals (ICPT) might feel like the only biotech stock that matters today, but there are others. For instance, Incyte (INCY) and BioMarin (BMRN) are on the move after Barclays changed its ratings on the pair.

  REUTERS

  But before getting into that, let’s talk about Barclays’ Ying Huang and team’s thoughts on the sector. Would you believe they echo those of Goldman Sachs in its downgrade of the sector earlier this week (and just about everyone else) by calling this a stock picker’s market?

  Huang explains:

  Biotech should continue to outperform in 2014, but may be a more stock-specific year: We believe biotech as a group will continue to outperform the broad market in 2014 but do not expect a repeat of 2013. In 2013, the Nasdaq Biotech Index outperformed the S&P 500 by a large margin (+65.6% vs. S&P +29.6%), driven by a combination of generalist investor interest, hunt for growth opportunities, healthy long-term outlook for the industry, and an accommodative FDA. While we expect trends to remain strong in the overall industry and for biotech to outperform the broader market in 2014, it will likely be more muted, with fewer meaningful c! atalysts ! and as investors favor larger companies with less downside risk.

  Huang too falls back on the PEG ratio–Price/Earnings to Growth–while explaining away the sectors P/E of 31.4, which dwarfs the 18 P/E in U.S. pharmaceuticals. “Looking at PEG ratios, which we view as a more appropriate metric given the growth profile of biotech companies, the group has traded at a reasonable and stable 1.0x for the past decade,” Huang says.

  As for Incyte and BioMarin, Huang explains why he’s bullish on the former, bearish on the latter:

  After taking a closer look at [Incyte's] pipeline assets, we are increasingly bullish on its proprietary JAK1 inhibitor INCB39110 and its IDO inhibitor INCB024360 and have increased ou

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  When a biotech stock has already gained 556% this year, like Intercept Pharmaceuticals (ICPT) has, there’s really only one thing for an analyst to do–raise their price target. And that’s exactly what Citigroup did today with Intercept Pharmaceuticals, the best performing biotech company in the Russell 2000.

  Intercept Pharmaceutical has surged 576% this year after gaining today, besting InterMune’s (ITMN) 119% spike and Sangamo BioSciences’ (SGMO) 63% advance.

  Citigroup’s Jonathan Eckard and team explain why they’re even more excited about Buy-rated Intercept Pharmaceuticals:

  We are raising[Intercept Pharmaceuticals' target price] to $700 (+$100) based on higher regulatory confidence following a thorough assessment of FDA history with blood lipid changes in other settings involving liver damage/repair. We believe the FDAs understanding of these lipid changes is under-recognized by the Street and the agencys past lack of response to them highlights this. Therefore, we expect the lipid changes in the FLINT trial are likely to receive less regulatory scrutiny than current Street expectations and this is not reflected in [Intercept Pharmaceuticals'] current v! aluation.! We also believe certain FLINT data could be publicly available by the end of July and before the anticipated AASLD showing.

  What does all that mean for Intercept Pharmaceuticals? Here’s the one-sentence version: “Our increase is driven primarily by higher probability of approval and more rapid penetration into the most severe NASH population.”

  Shares of Intercept Pharmaceuticals have gained 2.9% to $461.11, while InterMune has dropped 2.9% to $32.29 and Sangamo BioSciences has dipped 0.5% to $22.67.

source from Top Penny Stocks For 2015:http://www.seekpennystocks.com/hot-biotech-companies-to-buy-for-2015.html