Is Pernix Therapeutics in a Race to Zero?

Pernix Therapeutics Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PTX) saw its shares hit a 52-week low in regular trading on Thursday after it reported its first-quarter financial results. Seeing this stock’s performance year to date (down 64%) and over the past year (down 83%), it seems like this company is on a race to zero, unless something happens and fast.

The company posted a net loss of $0.35 per share on $32.5 million in revenue. Thomson Reuters consensus estimates had called for a net loss of $0.06 on revenue of $44.55 million. In the same period of last year, Pernix reported a net loss of $0.11 and $33.89 million in revenue.

Pernix went as far in this report to withdraw its prior 2016 financial guidance, which definitely hurt investors opinions of this stock. The company intends to update its guidance upon the conclusion of the following initiatives.

The Pernix Prescriptions Direct (PPD) program continued to expand this quarter, with over 10,000 patients enrolled since the program was initiated. The average weekly growth in prescriptions holds at 16% since the launch in August 2015. Currently PPD represents 11% of Treximet and 6% of Silenor weekly total prescriptions.
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In terms of product sales the company reported:

• Treximet had revenues of $16.3 million, down 4.7% from last year.
• Silenor had revenues of $3.6 million, down 1.4%.
• Zohydro had revenues of $5.5 million.
• Other products had revenues of $7.0 million, down 0.6%.

Doug Drysdale, chairman and CEO of Pernix, commented:

We are positioned for growth across each of our core brands over the remaining months of 2016. In support of this growth, the launch and continued ramp of our PPD program is meeting our internal expectations and we are optimistic about our ability to grow the number of physicians recommending and patients using PPD.  Refill rates in the PPD program are higher than retail levels, which will create a compounding effect for our script volumes as more patients utilize PPD and as we add more new scripts.

Shares of Pernix were trading down 44% at $0.59 Thursday afternoon, with a consensus analyst price target of $6.67 and a 52-week trading range of $0.58 to $7.10.