I'm not sure if you were long during the period of late 2004 to early 2005. If you were, it was obvious that there was a concerted attempt by Brean Murray, UBS, and their hedge fund clients to keep the stock price down, especially around the time of the ASCO Prostate Symposium. This is a big factor in some of the more rabid DNDN longs taking their paranoia to absurd heights. Basically, after it was announced that 9901 had achieved stat sig overall survival in late Oct 2004, there was quite a big price spike from the 7s to the 13s. The short position doubled soon afterward. In 11/04, Brean Murray downgraded from a buy or strong buy with a price target in the 20s to a sell with a price target of $6...with no stop in between at a hold.
The analyst, Jonathan Aschoff, stated flat-out that DNDN mgmt was not telling the truth when it said the survival benefit was seen across all Gleason scores, and he further stated that the p value was entirely driven by an imbalance favoring the Provenge arm for Gleason scores less than or equal to 7, that the Provenge arm received more chemo during the 3-yr followup, and that the p value was likely just barely under 0.05. UBS jumped on the bandwagon in 1/05 after the announcement of the ttp endpoint miss in the 9902A trial, also citing the supposed Gleason score and post-Provenge chemo imbalances and a barely significant p value. DNDN mgmt had been saying all along that there were no imbalances in post-Provenge chemo, but Aschoff stated in his rpt that he did not believe mgmt.
Anyway, DNDN had been saying for months that they would not release full details about the 9901 trial survival results until the ASCO Prostate Symposium in 2/05. On 2/16, the day before the conference, the stock price climbed from the high 6s to the low 8s due to ABC-Chicago coming out with a story of this new prostate vaccine extending survival. When DNDN released the PR the next morning 2/17 detailing the 0.01 p value, the 34% vs 11% three-yr survival numbers, and the reiteration that a similar survival benefit for Provenge also occurred in pts with Gleason scores 8 and above, the price spiked very quickly in premarket to the mid-9's. Almost immediately, and still two days before DNDN was to present on 2/19 with full data details, UBS released a downgrade from hold to sell, again citing the supposed Gleason imbalance, and Brean again released a sell reiteration. The price dropped throughout the day, down into the high 7's. In addition, the price dropped almost exclusively on 100-share trades that machine-gunned the Bid down a penny at a time. Something like 18 million shares traded that day, approx 25 times the avg daily volume. There was definitely some deliberate capping going on. Anyway, neither analyst acknowledged in their rpt their mistaken assumptions that the p value would be barely under 0.05. It was clear that both brokerages had a ready-made report prepped for release, no matter what the data turned out to be, and these reports were clearly timed to help cap the price before options expiration the next day.
The presentation was on Saturday 2/19, and it was clear from the slides that the survival benefit was across all Gleason scores, so UBS and Brean were again wrong. However, they both released additional reports the following week reiterating their hatchet jobs from the previous Thursday, and neither acknowledged their previous accusations that DNDN mgmt was lying to investors about the Gleason score issue. Instead, they both cited 9901's missed primary endpoint of ttp (even though the p value was 0.061), and belittled DNDN's contention that survival was more important to the FDA than time to progression. However, their biggest argument now became the post-treatment chemo imbalance during followup, and there remained plenty of verbal accusations going around (this time not in writing), that BOTH DNDN mgmt and Dr. Small were promoting fraudulent data.
The funniest aspect of this story was the fact that the UBS analyst thought he found another imbalance favoring Provenge, this one being fewer patients with only soft tissue metastases (no bone mets) in the Provenge arm. Wow! Everyone knows that the major organs are classified under soft tissue for this purpose, so fewer visceral mets in the Provenge arm is huge! He was rather smug on the conference call the next week when he "ambushed" DNDN mgmt with this issue, even stating that soft tissue mets indicate a worse prognosis than bone mets. You could actually hear laughter in the background from Urdal and Gold when they explained to him that patients with visceral mets were denied enrollment in the trial, and that advanced prostate cancer pts with only soft tissue mets in the lymph actually have a BETTER prognosis than pts with bone mets. Needless to say, this particular "imbalance" didn't merit mention in that week's UBS rpt on DNDN.
A few months later, at the main ASCO conference, Dr. Small presented some slides showing that 37% of the Provenge arm got Taxotere after progression and 49% of the control arm did the same. A higher % of control arm pts also received any taxane in general, and the same for any other chemos. Again, no acknowledgement of this by UBS or Brean in their reports. Instead, they said that the Provenge pts received earlier chemo, and this drove the survival benefit.
Brean and UBS derive a hefty chunk of their revenue from their trading desks, with hedge funds being the primary contributors. There are articles on record citing certain powerful hedge fund managers demanding favorable treatment from the brokerage trading desks. I have no doubt that both of these brokerages will release reports criticizing the company upon news of the BLA's acceptance for review.
AI
