Health and Healthcare

Endo International Is America's Least Successful Company of 2016

Paul Ausick

Published: December 27, 2016 12:35 pm

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:24 pm

Among U.S.-listed public companies, the worst performers over the course of a year are certain to include several biotech firms. Some biotechs also may appear on a list of the best performers too, but not with the same frequency.

In 2016, nine of the 12 worst performing firms were health care businesses, and all but one of those was a biotech firm. The fortunes of biotech stocks — and their investors — often turn on a successful or failed drug trial.

Drugmakers’ stocks can also get clobbered by regulatory investigations. That’s what happened to this year’s least successful company: Endo International PLC (NASDAQ: ENDP), which has seen its share price fall by about 73.7% over the first 51 weeks of this year.

Endo’s share price dropped after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint in March alleging that the drugmaker used pay-for-delay settlements to fix generic drug prices of Opana and Lidoderm. Lidoderm, a pain-relieving patch, accounted for approximately 30% of Endo’s quarterly sales before its patent expired at the end of 2013. Relatedly, Endo’s stock price fell in November after a class action lawsuit was filed alleging Endo’s subsidiary Par Pharmaceutical colluded with several other companies in the industry to fix generic drug prices.

After two consecutive years of profits, Endo reported a loss of almost $1 billion last year — despite revenue increasing from $2.38 billion in fiscal 2014 to $3.27 billion in fiscal 2015. 2016 revenues are forecast to rise to $3.93 billion and the consensus earnings per share estimate for the year is $4.60. But that does not include any penalties that might arise from the FTC investigation or the blizzard of shareholder lawsuits that already has begun.

Check out all of the 24/7 Wall Street list of 2016’s best and poorest performing companies.