Celgene Proves Riskier Than Imagined (CELG)

Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ:CELG) is seeing the price of its shares crushed today after trial results were shown on Sunday at the 49th annual American Society of Hematology (ASH) Meeting of Celgene’s drug Revlimid as a treatment for a blood cancer failed to impress Wall Street.  One trial compared Revlimid combined with dexamethosone, a steroid, to only dexamethosone. The second trial combined Revlimid with two different doses of dexamethosone and the levels of complete response with total remission has failed to please.

Shares of Celgene traded down to a new 52-week low today.  Its prior range over the last year was $49.46 to $75.44, and it traded as low as $47.21 today.  Shares are currently down about 14% at $49.35 and the stock has traded over 26 million shares.

Since October, shares of Celgene have now lost 1/3 of their value, and its market cap is still over $19 Billion.  Prior to today, analysts estimates from First Call put the entire 2008 revenues at $2.06 Billion.  Prior to today’s stock sale the average analyst price target was over $75.00.  Wachovia just assigned a new Outperform rating to it last week, and in the two weeks prior it had been upgraded at BMO Capital Markets and at Banc of America.

This had previously been a Cramer pick as well and he’s even interviewed the CEO before.  Cramer has also evaluated this one before with other biotech blow-ups.

Jon C. Ogg

December 10, 2007

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