Cramer's Play on Diabetes

On tonight’s MAD MONEY on CNBC, Jim Cramer said the action of the Defensive Stocks makes you need to watch the drug stocks in case the Fed doesn’t actually cut rates like they should.  Cramer has some picks in the sector from overseas, because these could be immune from the same pressures that domestics could be under in a democratic environment. 

Novo Nordisk (NVO-NYSE) out of Denmark is the best play he has in the foreign drug stocks because they have 50% of the global diabetes market in its insulin treatments.  It outsells Pfizer (PFE) and Sanofi Aventus (SNY) in these analog insulins.  Its patents are good through 2011, longer than most.  It already sells its old fashion human insulin play at low prices so it is insulated against pressure there from generics.  It also fell after failing a Phase III trial in a non-diabetes treatment drug for an expanded use that wasn’t really important to Cramer.  He likes it purely from the diabetic perspective. 

If this stock is familiar sounding from us, it is because this one of our "15 Second Line Defensive Stocks" we ran as a stock to hide out in when the market was crummy.  Do you think diabetics will stop taking insulin if the economy softens or if they are losing too much money in their tech stocks? We don’t think so either.

Jon C. Ogg
March 21, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.