What Can Biotech Investors Learn from the 2021 ASCO And EHA Meetings About Investing In Biomedical M

Summary:

• With the upcoming AAIC21 meeting (starting July 26), we reviewed biotech company stock performance from presentations at ASCO21 and EHA21, to look for trends that could be used for investments around presentations at AAIC21

• ASCO and EHA are annual June biomedical meetings with important clinical trial updates from smid-cap biotech companies

• Despite their virtual format, lots of updates for smid-cap companies, occurred at ASCO and EHA 2021

• Many of the clinical updates appeared to move the underlying stock by 15% or more

• For a more detailed analysis of stock trends at ASCO and EHA, read our full article HERE, after signing up (locks in our current introductory pricing).Learn more here.
  

Biomedical meetings are important events for catalyst readouts for Biotech investors. With the upcoming Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on July 26-30, 2021 (AAIC21), which include several Big-Mover presentations, we thought it would be a good time to review the significant results of recent ASCO and EHA conferences. ASCO and EHA are important meetings that occur annually, in June, where biotech companies present important clinical trial updates. At BPIQ.com we focus on biotech companies with market caps under $5 billion (“smid-cap” stocks) because the stock price of those companies tends to move the most with clinical trial updates. Despite their virtual format, lots of updates for smid-cap biopharma companies occurred at ASCO21 and EHA21. Seventy-seven (77) companies from our database at BPIQ.com presented clinical data updates at ASCO (“ASCO21 Smid-caps”) from June 4-8, 2021 (See Table 1 ASCO) and 23 companies presented clinical data updates at EHA (“EHA21 Smid-caps”) from June 9-17, 2021 (See Table 1 EHA).

Many of these smid-cap biopharma stocks with clinical updates at ASCO and EHA appeared to move the underlying stock by 15% or more. As shown by the green shading in Table 1 ASCO and Table 1 EHA, 48 of 77 (62.3%) of ASCO and 12 of 23 (52.2%) of EHA companies moved by 15% or more up or down, in May, June, or these months combined. As shown in Table 2, the top positive move for an ASCO smid-Cap company in May or June was an 89.96% move, and for EHA it was 33.18%. The largest downward move for an ASCO smid-cap company was -52.67% and for an EHA smid-cap was -44.00%.

Table 2 - Largest stock moves for ASCO and EHA companies

The biggest apparent ASCO/EHA movers (May/June combined moves shown in parentheses) were PDSB (+119%) (See our prior article on this Big-Mover company/event) and PTGX (+55.1%). It is noteworthy that XBI, an important biotech ETF, moved by -7.4% in May, 7.1% in June and -0.9% combined. IBB, an important biotech index, moved by -2.4% in May, 8.5% in June and 5.8% combined. Thus, as expected, ASCO and EHA were important meetings for smid-cap biopharma stocks and investors.

In summary, as expected ASCO21 and EHA21 were important events for smid-cap bipharma companies and investors. Although ASCO21 appeared to have more big-mover events (positive and negative), there were quite a few smid-caps that were big movers who presented at either of these biomedical meetings. There were twice as many negative big-movers than positive big-movers. Thus, biopharma investors should not be fooled by the sexy science being presented at these meetings, but must do their diligence before making investment decisions going into biomedical meetings like ASCO and EHA. This is important going into AAIC21 later this month, which includes what we believe will be several Big-Mover presentations (See our BPIQ.com July/August 2021 Big Movers).

Table 1 ASCO - Stock moves for companies between $100M and $5B Market Cap that had an expected efficacy clinical trial readout at ASCO21 per BPIQ.com

(*note that green highlight indicates an absolute value move (up or down) of 15% or more in either May, June, or from May 1 to June 30, 2021.)

Table 1 EHA - Stock moves for companies between $100M and $5B Market Cap that had an expected efficacy clinical trial readout at EHA21 per BPIQ.com

(*note that green highlight indicates an absolute value move (up or down) of 15% or more in either May, June, or from May 1 to June 30, 2021.)