Midwest biotech stocks receive hefty haircut in first half of 2005

Midwest biotech stocks receive hefty haircut in first half of 2005

When we met last week, we reviewed the performance of the Midwest large cap life science group of companies in the context of how the overall stock market indices reacted during the first half of 2005.
The message was that the major indices were substantially down (as can be seen below) with the exception of the Amex Biotech index. In spite of this general market malaise, a number of Midwest companies were up on a very solid basis.

For this week, it’s time to take a look at the smaller cap Midwest biotech publicly traded companies to gauge the sector performance. Let’s see how we did:

At least there are a handful of companies that outperformed both the biotech indices as well as the other major indices. Aastrom Biosciences saw a significant increase in its stock price. The company seems to be capitalizing on the rising tide of interest in stem-cell therapy research, which is in the public eye due to the major commitments in research by a number of states.

Misery loves company, eh? What a haircut our Midwest biotech stocks took in the first half of the year.
It’s virtually an across-the-board haircut that affected medical devices, specialty pharma, drug delivery and conventional biotech alike. Granted, many of the larger cap biotech stocks weathered the storm, but we have a few companies in the $2 billion range that also got short-circuited.
While this isn’t a pretty picture, this is only the mid-year point (and of course oil prices keep rising). See you next week when we will focus on the progress of venture capital funding in the life science space in the first half of 2005.

Michael S. Rosen is president of Rosen Bioscience Management, a company that provides CEO services including financing, business and corporate development to start-up and early stage life science companies such as Renovar and Immune Cell Therapy. Rosen is also a founder and board member of the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization. He can be reached at rosenmichaels@aol.com.
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