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The Barron's article on YPF had a 7%+ effect
Dew, I assume you've seen this?
WSJ
t has been quite a year for Hess. The oil mini-major's stock, for years a laggard, have risen 49% in 2013 to date, trouncing both its sector and the S&P 500.
Roughly a third of that gain, however, came in just two trading sessions in January. That is when it became public that activist fund Elliott Management had taken a stake and was pressing for radical change. With the company having given some ground on governance and strategy in a compromise agreement announced in May, Hess's stock has kept rising. After that initial pop, though, it has merely kept pace with the market.
But Hess could offer investors more in 2014. Superficially, it looks like Hess has surpassed its peers on valuation. It began 2013 trading at just 8.3 times forward earnings, a one-third discount to the S&P 500. Today, Hess's multiple is 13.7 times, a discount of less than 10%.
But earnings metrics can be misleading in the capital-intensive oil business. For example, most of the third-quarter earnings miss that hit Hess's stock in October concerned accelerated depreciation on a Norwegian oil field, a noncash charge. Cash flow is a better metric. Hess's enterprise value, including net debt, is 4.6 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization on a consensus basis—about average among its peers.
But that likely overstates the true figure. Net debt was $5.9 billion at the end of the third quarter. At that time, according to CreditSights, there was $2.8 billion worth of divestitures awaiting completion and another $3 billion being marketed. As Hess continues selling noncore assets, its cash flow relative to its shrinking asset base should rise, implying a lower multiple. Notably, while earnings forecasts have fallen since September, cash flow forecasts have risen.
Moreover, restructuring offers a hedge for the stock at a time when the risk of weaker oil prices is rising. Peers such as ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil have undergone radical change, splitting into more focused companies and paying more cash to shareholders. Both have roundly beaten the market and the sector over the past four years.
If oil prices weigh on Hess's stock next year, expect Elliott and others to press for more change.
Write to Liam Denning at liam.denning@wsj.com
Not at all. I'm all in favor, if the lawyers think there's a reasonable chance of succcess. But I don't want anything to distract from the main prize - Iclusig. Anything else is secondary.
Don Quixote. Windmills.
More to the point, Berger's one and only priority right now must be to advance the discussions with the FDA so as to get Iclusig back on the market with a tolerable label. He can get around to suing the infidels after that.
I have no idea what Berger is going to do.
Nor do you.
No, he probably has many other things to do than sitting around with his finger up his butt. As he should. But you haven't even tried to respond to my request for evidence. Is there any?
At one point in time Amgen traded at the equivalent of seven cents on a split adjusted basis.
Dr. Joseph Rubinfeld, one of the co-founders of Amgen, is on AMBS's advisory board.
Q.E.D., most certainly.
It is clear to me that HB asked aria's outside counsel to determine if there is a solid basis to initiate a lawsuit
And the evidence for that clarity is.....?
tend?
Interesting, but higher risk than I like. Admittedly, I am in ARIA. And the chart does show it has been bought recently. But Kirchner is the negating trump, IMO.
Moral indignation is a wonderful feeling. Purgative. But it doesn't make one any money.
Berger's job right now is to get negotiations with the FDA on track so as to bring pona back to the market with a label we can live with. I hope that's what he's doing. War with the FDA could destroy Ariad.
You seem to have a manichean attitude to the world.
I totally agree - it would be terminally stupid. Some "slam dunk"!
From the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who can often be alarmist.
Bank of America has advised clients to take out default insurance against Chinese debt, warning that monetary tightening by China’s central bank risks setting off a bout of serious credit stress in 2014.
Bin Yao, the bank’s credit strategist in Asia, said Chinese bond yields have already risen to the highest in a decade as the authorities seek to rein in rampant growth of the M2 money supply and excess credit, yet markets remain “complacent” about the implications.
He recommends buying credit default swaps (CDS) on five-year Chinese debt as the easiest way to “hedge the China tail risk”. These contracts spiked to 266 after the Lehman crisis and again to 206 during the ‘hard-landing scare’ of late 2011. They have since settled down to stable levels, trading this week near 66.
Bin Yao said the markets have underestimated the risk of a monetary squeeze. The central bank has already raised interest rates by three quarters of a point over the last year. Rising yields are pushing the shadow banking system closer to the brink. “We find trust loans especially troubling,” he said.
Short-term debt issuance by trust companies has jumped to $320bn from almost zero two years ago. A new study by the China Academy of Financial Research warned that the trusts face a redemption shock after promising returns of 10pc to 15pc that may be impossible to deliver.
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The pattern has echoes of what happened to Icelandic banks and Northern Rock, which relied on fickle capital markets during the credit boom. They were caught in a vice when funding suddenly dried up. The Academy said Jilin Trust, AsAc, and Taipingyang Municipal, are among the most overextended. All three have had trouble rolling over debt or covering payouts over recent days.
Fitch Ratings says the explosive growth of loans over the last five years in China is unprecedented in any major country in recorded history. Credit has risen from 125pc to 200pc of GDP, if all forms wealth products and offshore banking are included. The Chinese credit system has grown to $24 trillion from $9 trillion in late 2008, equivalent to adding the entire US commercial banking system.
The pace of credit growth over the five-year period exceeds the extremes seen before Japan’s Nikkei bubble burst in 1990, or before the onset of the US housing crash in 2007.
China’s banking system is ultimately controlled by the state. Any post-bubble credit purge is likely to play out in a different way, with less risk of a dramatic crisis and more risk of a chronic malaise.
China’s central bank seems determined to cool the credit boom under its so-called “flexible opaque” policy before it reaches unmanageable extremes. It has targeted M2 growth of 13pc, which will require further tightening. It has also pushed real interest rates up to a range of 1pc to 2pc, an unpleasant surprise for those relying on negative rates to fund high leverage.
Investors do not usually buy CDS insurance because they think a country will default. The contracts are used as a hedge by ‘real money’ funds or companies with heavy exposure to an economy, often in fixed plant or other illiquid assets. The CDS market acts as a stabilising force, reducing the risk of asset fire-sales in a crisis.
The contracts are also used by traders as a proxy for betting on political and financial stress. Volatile spikes can yield turbocharged gains for those who time it right.
I will vote Harvey Berger for the greatest CEO of all time if his legal team takes actions against the FDA.
He'll certainly get the Don Quixote prize.
Yes that's right. The writer I was replying to seemed to think it was today.
With options expiring it will have to close under 4 today. I'm assuming around 3.84
With options expiring
Today?
Current market cap is just under 752M but Market Value is much less based on the PPS
What's your formula for calculating "market cap" and "market value"?
Wow did you see that huge buy.
The best part was that there was no seller, no doubt.
But you'll notice our own zipjet tried to restore order.
Odd board in general. Some are knowledgeable but sometimes allow themselves to be overcome with emotion/indignation. Adam's attitude to Berger set some off today.
WSJ
DON’T BANK ON IT
Wall Street looks to be throwing in the towel on the commodities business.
Morgan Stanley is reported to be following the example of JP Morgan Chase & Co. by putting its U.S. oil terminal and transport business up for sale. Regulatory pressure is weighing down so hard that the banks’ arguments are being drowned out.
This isn’t restricted to the U.S., by the way—one of Europe’s biggest financial players, Deutsche Bank, is getting out of trading many commodities. The environment has turned against banks.
Commodities traders, however, will be pleased to see some of their direct competition get regulated out of the market.
The money goes to IMMPACT, the conference organizer. Are scientific meetings that require fees to attend that unusual?
10%? You sure you got your decimal right?
Feuerstein actually seems to be making a case for holding on to GERN - at this price. I bought a few and am a dime under water.
The Zacks piece yesterday was days out of date when it was issued. If any people took it seriously they deserved to lose money.
Also interesting that the MD Andersen front line trial shows not a hint of cardiovascular issues
That hardly seems possible, does it?
I SAID it was suspicious - which means I agree with you. Take yes for an answer.
As my mother would have said, that trade was "cousu de fil blanc." If that's the best the wannabe manipulators can do, bring 'em on.
Apologies for having riled you. I'll admit to anything that will make you happy.
Sorry, 4.11
(It's a trade I'd like to forget)
Call it manipulation if you will, but with 50,000 shares changing hands, it looks like perfectly normal pre market trading to me. Unfortunately for me since I bought at 5.11 on Friday.
I'll agree that the trade(s) that went off at 3.50 looks mighty suspicious. Any one have a T&S for it?
That's correct. Did I say otherwise?
That's not even close to what Biomaven has written.
Good example of Yahooliganism at its worst.
Yes, I understand and agree that 113 has been tarred with the pona brush.
Thank you Dr. Pazdur (I wish)
It sounds almost like you're saying that negative surprises cannot arise in the case of 113 by the nature of the drug?
EDITED OUT - DUPLICATE INFO
This will change
as we get more information about 113 progress.
I hope the info we get on '113 turns out to be more actionable than the optimistic info we were getting on pona during the run up.
I don't know if this has been posted.
WSJ
Prostate Cancer Study Finds Success With Drug Combo
By
Ron Winslow
Updated Dec. 5, 2013 8:01 p.m. ET
Men with advanced prostate cancer survived significantly longer on a combination of two types of drugs than if they were started on the standard single treatment, according to a major federally sponsored study, which researchers suggested should change the way many such patients are treated.
The treatments involved hormone therapy to suppress levels of testosterone, the natural fuel for prostate tumors, and the chemotherapy docetaxel. Conventional practice has been to start men on testosterone suppression and then try docetaxel chemotherapy once the cancer progressed, said Christopher Sweeney, a medical oncologist at the Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and lead investigator for the study.
But the 790-patient trial, which began in 2006, found that 69% of men who started with the combination therapy were alive after three years, compared with 52.5% who were started on hormone therapy alone, researchers said Thursday.
The survival advantage, determined in a recent interim analysis of the study by an independent safety committee, was so striking that officials at the National Cancer Institute decided to release the finding early before a full analysis of the trial was completed. The NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, funded the study.
"The data point was so strong and clear and accurate we feel confidence releasing this" for patients and clinicians to consider in treatment decisions, Dr. Sweeney said.
The interim analysis also showed that men with particularly advanced disease—those whose cancer had spread to at least four different locations in bone or had spread to a major organ such as the liver—were the most likely to benefit from the combination treatment, the NCI said.
Docetaxel, marketed as Taxotere by Sanofi SA, is also available in generic versions. Dr. Sweeney said, "The evidence is strong enough that I would offer [the combination] to my patients who have the high volume of disease and are eligible for docetaxel."
Because of side effects associated with chemotherapy, some men with prostate cancer aren't strong enough to take it, he said.
Since the study launched, other prostate-cancer remedies have been approved, including Zytiga from Johnson & Johnson and Xtandi from Astellas Pharmaceuticals of Japan and Medivation of San Francisco, both of which are hormone treatments. How they might fit into treatment regimens in the light of the new findings will be the subject of further study, Dr. Sweeney said
I see the drug being used effectively in several indications and side effects issues being managed intelligently.
I hope so.
From Biomaven on SI, worth bearing in mind. Obviously, it cuts both ways - doesn't cure, but it leaves you with a stable customer base....
Iclusig, albeit the most powerful drug, does not cure CML - patients have to keep taking it as long as they live. So an unacceptable SAE rate would make that impractical. At this point the drug is almost certainly destined as the last resort only.