Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) is in trouble.  That is what the performance is telling investors.  The maker of Provenge as a late-stage prostate cancer treatment has three issues working against it.  The company has some growing competitive pressures.  It also has ‘investigative risk’ tied to the company now.  What is the biggest issue is that Provenge sales just are not leading up to as much as what the company and investors had hoped.

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) release positive data on its Zytiga medicine showing that the treatment helped high-risk patients.  Zytiga was approved in 2011 and the drug helped patients’ tumors when prostate cancer had not yet metastasized beyond the prostate gland.

What is happening is that Dendreon keeps having lower Provenge sales despite the hope that more reimbursement and more doctor recommendations are supposed to be helping.  This is the second big drop this month after a disappointing revenue figure was shown over a week ago. Analysts have a Thomson Reuters consensus target of just over $367 million in sales in 2012 and just over $513 million in sales in 2013.

Wednesday brought up more questions because the SEC probe may be tied to the company’s dropped sales projections for Provenge in earlier periods when shares were far higher. The reality is that this had been disclosed with earnings over a week ago, but investors are shooting first and asking questions later.

The only good news here for investors is that Dendreon’s stock chart may offer some support not too much lower than the current 10.6% drop to $7.70. Dendreon has four different presentations at ASCO this June and here is a Seeking Alpha transcript of the CFO presentation at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch health conference this week.

At $7.70, Dendreon’s 52-week range is $6.46 to $42.87.  Those old hopes of a Dendreon buyout now feel very dated.

The company’s market cap is now only $1.14 billion and Dendreon has over $500 million in cash and liquidity on hand.  The presentation at a conference this week currently shows no need to raise more capital until the company can reach a breakeven level.

JON C. OGG

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