Genentech Earnings Win, But Drugs Miss (DNA)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Genentech (NYSE: DNA) just announced its earnings were $0.69 EPS on $2.96 billion for the last quarter, and First Call had estimates pegged at $0.67 EPS on revenues of $2.97 Billion.  The company has also guided its fiscal 2008 Earnings Per Share in a range of $3.30 to $3.47 EPS versus $3.37 estimates from First Call.

We noted that Wall Street has focused on the individual drug disappointments here from drug to drug for too long, but today’s problem is one that is hard to overlook even if you are more of a big picture sort of investor.  It isn’t that it didn’t have any significant outperformance.  Genentech missed on Wall Street expectations on all four of its top four drugs.

The good news is that shares of Genentech are only down about 2% at $69.15 in after-hours trading, and $65.35 is the 52-week low from December.  We noted that options traders were pricing in only a move of up to about $2.50 in either direction, and the $1.49 drop is well within that range.

We’ll have to see if any downgrades come in based on all top four drugs showing disappointment win over the calls of "unbelievable valuation" and "incredible valuation" calls from Wall Street analysts.  Until then, this is just an unfinished biotech earnings and post-earnings story.   

Jon C. Ogg
January 14, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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