Cramer’s Biotech Zombie Looking Up

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.

On Friday’s MAD MONEY on CNBC, Jim Cramer discussed Nastech Pharma (NSTK).  This is one of the biotech zombies that has fallen from grace, but Cramer thinks they have some winning compounds worth a dabble in the company.  NSTK loses money and it lost Merck on the obesity study and for a while it only issued press releases.  The stock is thought of as a joke, but now you must own it if you are a biotech speculator according to Cramer.  He reviewed the company for 5 days last week before reviewing it.  It has $90M cash and has compounds for RNA Interference tests, obesity, osteoporosis, and others.  None of the products are commercial yet but it has plenty of cash to stay ahead of its burn rate.  When it got crushed last year they left the street with no reason to own the stock.  At the end of the year it stopped issuing press releases and now the main seller has finally cleaned out of the stock.  Cramer thinks the compounds may actually work and Wall Street doesn’t know it. Cramer said they have also hired a great industry insider to help it work on compounds. 

Investors may also want to know that the company is making an investor presentation at the Invest Northwest Investor and CEO Forum on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 4:35 p.m. Pacific Time at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle. 

It is too early to see the prints at 6:30 AM this morning but shares traded up 6% on more than 100,000 to $11.31 Friday night.  NSTK did trade up late Friday after announcing its investor presentation.  The 52-week range is $9.50 to $19.98 and its market cap as of the $10.66 close was $271.5 million.  Pre-market indications have the offer as high as $11.60, but that may be much different as we get closer to the open.

Jon C. Ogg
March 19, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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