Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR) Raised to Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
BP plc (NYSE: BP) Raised to Buy at Soc-Gen.
Consolidated Edison Inc. (NYSE: ED) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML.
Fair Isaac Corp. (NYSE: FICO) Raised to Hold at Argus.
Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE: BEN) Maintained Outperform as Bull of the Day at Zacks.
Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) Raised to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ: IRBT) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (NYSE: KMP) Started as Buy at Janney Capital.
LDK Solar Co. Inc. (NYSE: LDK) Cut to Hold at Argus.
Limited Brands, Inc. (NYSE: LTD) Raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs; Reiterated Buy at Argus.
LM Ericsson Telephone Co. (NASDAQ: ERIC) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML.
Maxim Integrated Products Inc. (NASDAQ: MXIM) Raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE) Cut to Underperform as Bear of the Day at Zacks.
Mosaic Co. (NYSE: MOS) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; Raised to Buy at Stifel Nicolaus.
OmniVision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OVTI) Reiterated Buy with $45 target at Gleacher & Co.
Pinnacle Entertainment (NYSE: PNK) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.

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JON C. OGG

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR) is up more than 22% on heavy volume to $32.79, relative to a 52-week range of  $20.43-$37.91. European regulators recently reversed their earlier decision and have approved the company’s multiple-sclerosis treatment drug.

Biosante Pharmaceutical, Inc. (NASDAQ: BPAX) is up more than 6% premarket to $2.60, relative to a 52-week range of $1.29-$2.69.

Opnext, Inc. (NASDAQ: OPXT) is up more than 19% premarket to $2.23, relative to a 52-week range of $1.29-$4.45. The company turned a 4Q profit in its report after market close yesterday.

Popular, Inc. (NASDAQ: BPOP) is down more than 6% on heavy volume to $2.85, relative to a 52-week range of $2.37-$3.59.

Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ACOR) is down 17.36% to $23, relative to a 52-week range of $24.99-$40.48. A European medical agency recently turned down a multiple sclerosis treatment made by the company.

Vivus Technologies (NASDAQ: VVUS) is down 15% to $8.88, relative to a 52-week range of $4.69-$13.68. The FDA requested more data for their experimental obesity drug.

The big winners of 2010 have so far included shares of Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN), InterMune Inc. (NASDAQ: ITMN), Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ: INCY), Theravance Inc. (NASDAQ: THRX), and ViroPharma Inc. (NASDAQ: VPHM). We have taken a look at what has driven the gains as well as what the prospects are for 2011 and beyond.  FULL REPORT

Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) appears to have the most implied upside of the $1 billion and higher catgory, but others included are Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN), Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD), Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG), Human Genome Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: HGSI), Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ: INCY), and Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR).  The full list is available showing the implied upside and we have added color and commentary on each.  FULL REPORT

Stay tuned for many more sector updates in many sectors with winners of 2010 and the outlook for 2011 and beyond!

JON C. OGG

Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOR) is down over 5.5% at $9.79 after the FDA said it needed more time to review its Supplemental New Drug Application for its Acthar decision for infantile spasms.

Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) is playing a 2% game of giveback today and shares are down at $40.99.  There has been some steady hope of a deal here on and off coming down the pipe, but the Medicare review period over reimbursements (a possible price shakedown) is a steady thorn in the side of PROVENGE in the fight against prostate cancer.

Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (NASDAQ: SVA) is trading up 7.5% at $4.30 on above average volume.  The company disclosed that there were THREE upcoming presentations:

• Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Unplugged Conference, New York, scheduled for September 14 at 2:10 pm ET.
• Morgan Stanley China Global Healthcare Day, Boston, September 15 in one-on-meetings with investors.
• UBS Global Life Sciences Conference, New York, scheduled for Monday, September 20 at 10:00 AM ET.

Stem cells are back in vogue…. Geron Corporation (NASDAQ: GERN), StemCells Inc. (NASDAQ: STEM), Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTM), Cytori Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: CYTX), Neostem, Inc. (AMEX: NBS), BioTime, Inc. (NASDAQ: BTIM) and Pluristem Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: PSTI) are all trading higher on word that US District Court has lifted that ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cells.

VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) is down 3.5% at $6.11 but it is on light trading volume.  Orexigen Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: OREX) is down 3.4% at $5.14 on thin volume, and this is the one that Takeda got on the map for a potential $1 billion obesity pill pact announced in recent weeks.  Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARNA) is also down 4% at $7.13 on fairly active trading volume.

Santarus Inc. (NASDAQ: SNTS) is up after it secured a license for a Type II diabetes drug for the exclusive manufacturing and commercial rights to Cycloset in the U.S. with S2 Therapeutics and VeroScience.  The company will pay an upfront $5 million fee and will then pay royalties to its partners from the Cycloset sales.  Santarus shares are trading up over 14% at $2.54 on about 10-times normal trading volume.

Genzyme Corporation (NASDAQ: GENZ) is up today on hopes of a higher Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) bid, although this appears to be  on a false rumor.

There was a massive push for drug and biotech research calls today.  Stocks given new coverage, upgrades, and downgrades were Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (NASDAQ: TEVA), Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN), Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR), Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG), Human Genome Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: HGSI), Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB), Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD), EXACT Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ: EXAS), ZymoGenetics Inc. (NASDAQ: ZGEN), Dyax Corp. (NASDAQ: DYAX), IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDXX), and ViroPharma Inc. (NASDAQ: VPHM) all have major research calls with a FULL RESEARCH SUMMARY WITH INDIVIDUAL CALLS HERE.

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JON C. OGG

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR) is trading higher after its Ampyra MS sales were reflected in its quarterly earnings.  Sales were close to double expectations at $30 million.  Shares are trading up 10% at $36.49 on only about 15,000 shares.

Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARNA) is weak again after a JPMorgan downgrade yesterday and ahead of earnings after the close today.  Shares are down another 2.5% at $6.99 on over 130,000 shares.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (NASDAQ: CTSH) is soaring after beating earnings estimates and raising 2010 guidance.  Shares are up 11.8% at $61.96 on about 200,000 shares.  Mark this as a 52-week high as the prior range was $29.76 to $56.08.

Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) is trading lower after the chemical giant reported Q2 earnings of $0.54 EPS on $13.6 billion in revenue versus estimates from Thomson Reuters of $0.56 EPS and $13.69 billion.  Shares are down 4.7% at $27.00 on over 100,000 shares versus a 52-week range of $19.75 to $32.05.

Genzyme Corp. (NASDAQ: GENZ) is trading marginally higher after reports that it has entered into friendly merger negotiations with Sanofi.  Shares are up 1% at $71.10, but on light trading volume.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) beat its earnings expectations this morning and maintained guidance. Shares are now up 3.6% at $16.04 on well over 2.5 million shares.

Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) shares are trading lower by about 3.4% at $59.94 on over 400,000 shares after earnings disappointed the street.  Advertising, slow growth, high promotions, and even private label selling are all chalked up as the culprit.  The 52-week range is $39.37 to $64.58, although that $39-handle is from The Flash Crash and is fake.

Solarfun Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ: SOLF) is trading higher, although maybe not a smuch as it would sound considering the news. Revenue rose 18% to $258.5M and earnings were $0.59 EPS vs. Thomson Reuters estimates of $212.8 M and $0.25 EPS.  There may be items in the numbers.  The big news is that Hanwa Chemical is paying roughly $10.72 per ADR to buy half of the company.  Shares are trading up 12.6% at $11.55 on over 250,000 shares, a new 52-week high versus a trading range of $4.48 to $10.78.

Sykes Enterprises, Incorporated (NASDAQ: SYKE) is getting crushed this morning after missing earnings estimates and lowering guidance.  Shares are down 32% at $10.35 on over 250,000 shares.  Mark that as a new 52-week low as the prior trading range was $13.48 to $26.91.

Trius Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSRX) priced its IPO of 10 million shares at $5.00.  The price is far lower than the prior $12 to $14 price range, but the share count is far higher.  This begins trading today.

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JON C. OGG

Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ACOR) Cut to Market Perform at Leerink Swann.
AGCO Corporation (NYSE: AGCO) Started as Hold at Morgan Joseph.
American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO) Raised to Buy at Wells Fargo.
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU) Cut to Neutral at UBS.
Andersons Inc. (NASDAQ: ANDE) Cut to Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) Started as Neutral at UBS.
Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) Raised to Buy at Needham.
NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) Cut to Market Perform at BMO Capital; Cut to Hold at Canaccord Adams.
VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) Started as Buy at UBS.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear about top analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPOs and secondary offerings, ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG
FEBRUARY 18, 2010

There are far more issues to consider for the week, but this is a start.  We’ll be doing more detailed earnings previews in groups during the week.

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR) has an FDA deadline of January 22 for an FDA decision of the drug Famipridine-SR developed along with Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB).  This is the MS drug aimed at helping MS patients in their walking.  Acorda received a delay on this event before in October until the Jan. 22 date, which temporarily caused a large and fast dip in the stock that shares have since recovered from.  For whatever this is worth, Acorda’s active FEB10 options have an open interest of more than 7,400 contracts in the CALLS and an open interest right at 20,000 contracts in the PUTS; and the short interest has come down a bit to just over 3 million shares if the preliminary January data has remained steady.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is not on the earnings deck this week, but there are more rumors out there regarding this week’s data showing more of the Mac tablet.  Macrumors.com even noted a touchscreen Mac with an 18″ screen coming later in the year.  Frankly, we are getting tired and tired of hearing about this tablet.  It is obvious as hell that the company is going to launch one, but if it doesn’t jump forward then other PC makers are going to preempt it and get theirs out ahead of Apple.  It is time to see and touch this product.

The Blackstone Group, LP (NYSE: BX) is likely to have an IPO for its majority-owned Travelport Ltd.  This is the travel reservation and booking operations (with Galileo and Worldspan brands) that is set to announce plans to raise about 1.2 billion Pounds (close to $1.95 billion U.S. Dollars) in a London Stock Exchange IPO.  This will help to pay down more than $3 billion in debt from the company after Blackstone and co-investors paid some $4.3 billion in 2006, and the Orbits IPO has already happened.

Phillip Morris International (NYSE: PMI) may be one to watch for exposure to China.  China is said to finally be making good on a promise to cut smoking in public with a public building smoking ban in 7 of the nation’s capitals with promises to clamp down more.  PMI has a venture with China National Tobacco to increase production and market share in China and China is the world’s largest tobacco market.  Bans in the U.S. and Europe have had far less impact than many thought it would against the tobacco companies, but that fear is there that smoking will ultimately be less and less prevalent if they limit the number of places you can smoke.

Verizon Communications Inc. NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) are entering into a price war which may be a no-win scenario for any carrier and a drag on smartphone maker margins.  Most unlimited voice and data plans for top smartphones will now be closer to $100 per month, down from about $130 now.  This may be ‘another price war round of cuts’ rather than something that is exactly new, but this creates the great race to zero by our count.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) is doing another deal, although this one may not have any major impact other than showing that Warren Buffett doesn’t mind making sure that Berkshire Hathaway stays dominant in the insurance and financial sector.  Swiss Re is getting about $1.27 billion from Buffett by transferring part of Swiss Re’s life insurance operations n the United States over to Berkshire Hathaway.

The business world is getting high on chocolate.  A bidding war for the sake of their being a bidding war is ensuing over Cadbury plc (NYSE: CBY).  Weekend reports have Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY) planning to leverage itself to the hilt.  The family trust controlled company is said to be about to offer at least $17.9 billion next week for Cadbury in an effort to top the Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) offer of $17.2 billion.  That would put Hershey’s price  offer in a range of 800 to 820 pence per the WSJ, over the implied 770 pence per share offer currently on the table from Kraft.  Here is the problem with Hershey doing this, they think it is the financial world of 2006 to 2007 where using leverage is a norm.  This will include a loan of at least $10 billion (WSJ noted from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch) and is likely to include $5 billion in newly issued Hershey shares and $3 billion or more from private investors and the Hershey trust.  Meanwhile, there are no assurances that THIS deal will get approved either as the CEO of Cadbury has already signaled that he believes shares will rise to more than 1,000 pence over the next three years.  Meanwhile, Kraft has a Tuesday deadline of deciding to hike its offer to Cadbury.  Hershey shareholders will get to decide if this over-leveraging of the business is the right move after shares have been cut in nearly half over the last five years and have been dead-money for the last two years without all the new leverage.

We could see a lowering of bias on revenues after JPMorgan for banks and brokers this week with a huge onslaught of financial firms reporting earnings.  This week’s top bank and financial earnings are as follows:

• Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is Tuesday morning and estimates are -$0.33 EPS and $18.43 billion in revenue.
• Wednesday is Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) and estimates are -$0.52 EPS and $26.84 billion in revenue.
• Wednesday is also Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) and estimates are -$0.02 EPS and $21.88 billion in revenue.
• Thursday is Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and estimates here are $5.19 EPS and $9.75 billion in revenue.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear about top analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPOs and secondary offerings, ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG

Acorda (NASDAQ: ACOR) Raised to Buy at Merriman Curhan Ford; Raised to Outperform at Baird.
International Paper (NYSE: IP) Started as Outperform at RBC.
OpenTable (NASDAQ: OPEN) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
PetroBras, or Petrobras Brasileiro (NYSE: PBR) Started as Outperform at Bernstein.
Sunpower (NASDAQ: SPWRA) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
ASML (NASDAQ: ASML) Cut to Sell at Citi.
Lazard (NYSE: LAZ) Cut to Perform at Oppenheimer.
Petroleum Development (NASDAQ: PETD) Cut to Neutral at Sun Trust.
Travelers Cos (NYSE: TRV) Cut To Market Perform at KBW.
Western Digital (NYSE: WDC) Cut to Hold at Stifel Nicolaus.

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JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 15, 2009

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR) down on FDA link that made its data public.

AVANIR Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVNR) is the top gainer so far as Zenvia data showed positive results at higher doses.

Infosys Technologies Limited (NASDAQ: INFY) beat earnings, but shares are down about 3%.

Savient Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) is trading up over 4% after a secondary offering, and an upgrade probably helped here.

Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPPI) is down sharply on complete response letter from FDA for FUSILEV in advanced metastatic colorectal cancer going against it.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (NYSE: TSM) is up marginally on over 1 million shares a sales drop still met plan.

You can join our open email distribution list to get updates each morning on analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, IPO’s and secondary offerings, Warren Buffett and other guru activity, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG
October 9, 2009