No Decisive Word on Encysive Pharmaceuticals

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

From BioHealth Investor

Things aren’t looking good. I wrote about Encysive Pharmaceuticals (ENCY) on Friday after their stock jumped on news they were restarting a Phase 2 clinical study on TCB3711. My sugestion then was this stock was still all about their response to a second approvable letter for Thelin, and adding to a short position on the price hike, while risky, might pay off.

Last night the FDA informed Encysive their response was incomplete. The stock dropped 7% to close just above $5.50 (20% off the high of $7 last Friday), putting the short position I suggested in the black.

I listened to Encysive CEO Bruce Given in the conference call ENCY hosted this morning and was not impressed. While initial press releases stated the problems were just in formatting, specifically that the FDA wanted some of the data in tables, Dr. Given backed off from being so definite and said the deficiencies were "for the most part just reformatting". As well, while initial reports suggested Encysive would refile within the week, Dr. Given also equivocated on this, saying he had to speak to the department involved.

It’s impossible to know for certain what this all means. What can be know is that any decision on whether the FDA accepts the resubmission will likely be pushed off until at least January or February. While the CEO didn’t say "stay the course" at any point, his answers to questions seemed straight out of Donald Rumsfeld’s playbook. Maybe I’m too suspicious, but I think there’s more to the story than is being told: perhaps an "unknown unknown". So, while this remains highly speculative, and is based purely on intuition and in no way on science or fact, I continue to think this will go down further.

http://www.biohealthinvestor.com/

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618