Health and Healthcare

Dendreon Interest Remains Extremely High

Since Dendreon (DNDN) has gotten a bit of life this week, there have been numerous inquiries as to "Where is this stock going?" from stock investors. 

There is obviously some hope by investors that the activists will be able to push the FDA into approving Provenge for late-stage prostate cancer.  The fact that an activist group has started Provengenow.org probably says it all.  It is not yet known who started Provengenow.org’s web site because the registrar is actually "MyPrivateRegistration" if you look up the domain owner.  This web site has actually become more full with more data even since yesterday.  What is becoming more obvious is that Dendreon "may" find itself as winner because of "cancer patient activism" rather than investor activism.  This activist group was also noted yesterday on CNBC and this helped the bullish scenario’s fight yesterday.

Do not interpret this as though we are saying this is going to occur, because we can’t and won’t say that.  What is obvious though is that speculators and investors are making bets on this daily. Shares are up 45% off of their recent lows put in after the FDA issued the approvable letter with a request for more data.  A 45% move is rarely just short covering and repositioning.  Dendreon shares are also up about 13% now from where they were at the $6.33 close the day that trading resumed from the disappointing FDA action (down from a $17.74 close the prior day).

Yesterday this rose on the AUA data that was new analysis on some older data, but we still have upcoming data presentations at the ASCO conference as well.  This is definitely one of the most unique stocks currently trading.  After looking at current options prices, it looks like options traders (selling the bets, static price only rather than floating) do not expect the stock to go over $8.00 nor below $6.40 over the next 3 weeks until the June options expire.

Jon C. Ogg
May 22, 2007

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

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