Analyst Brian Skorney goes grizzly on Biogen’s Alzheimer’s ‘hype,’ ‘fearmongering’ and ‘statistical malpractice’
Baird’s Brian Skorney took a bite out of Biogen $BIIB today.
The analyst outlined his bear thesis on Biogen’s bullish take on its prospects for their Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab in back-to-back notes out early Monday — mauling the company’s arguments in a grizzly-sized attack on the company, its execs and the suspect drug. And the clawed swipe forced a 2.4% drop in the share price at Biogen Monday morning — a sizable drop for a company with a $54 billion market cap.
First, Skorney warns investors that we’ve been here before. First Biogen triggers a big run-up in shares when it touts trial results, then watches the bleeding in red as the hard data undercut their assertions. That happened with BAN2401, and he expects it to happen again with aducanumab later this week during the CTAD meeting, where Biogen promised to reveal all.
The future of this drug may well ride on two key points, the numerical advantage in CDR-SB, where Biogen claimed to see a significant improvement in their EMERGE study. Skorney estimates that will come out as a disappointing 0.4, slightly under Aricept — which was approved with marginal benefits — and ever so slightly more than solanezumab, Eli Lilly’s big flop.
Here’s Skorney:
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