Agreed. After studying Halozyme's development pipeline, I'd been watching for news of that Tecentriq/atezolizumab trial for many months, with great anticipation. In my view, these trial results are very bullish for two main reasons: 1) the large worldwide prevalence of non-small cell lung cancer (it's the most common subtype of one of the most common tumor types, roughly 85% of all lung cancers are NSCLC), and 2) the global reach of Hoffman-La Roche. Atezolizumab is Roche's main answer to Merck's Keytruda/pembrolizumab and Bristol's Opdivo/nivolumab. So, for Roche's flagship immune checkpoint inhibitor to now have a competitive advantage in terms of ease of administration (SC versus IV) thanks to HALO's Enhanze technology, is a very big deal, at least in my view.
Like you, Fred, I've been mystified several times in the recent past how Halo's stock price has suffered upon release of good news. Seems like this is another example of that.
The only potential fly in the ointment with respect to the good news on the phase 3 trial, in my view, was the relatively minor reduction in administration time. As I recall, the press release told us the SC formulation takes 3 to 6 minutes to administer, compared to the IV formula which takes 30 to 60 minutes. While this is an increase in convenience to be sure (for both patients and clinicians) it's not the huge increase we see with daratumumab/hyaluronidase (Darzalex Faspro). As I understand it, IV daratumumab must be infused over a much longer time period (6 to 8 hours if memory serves) to prevent infusion reactions, so the time advantage of the SC route is of a much greater magnitude.
Nonetheless, for Halo to have an A-list collaboration partner like Roche, and to deepen that relationship still more (since Halo and Roche or Halo and Genentech [a Roche subsidiary] are already collaborating on other agents) seems to me a really big step forward for the company. Again, I cannot fathom the sell-off in HALO share price the past few days.
I'd buy more shares if I had more cash.
