Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

Would you think amgen would be better off buying back another $10b of it's stock or buying Onxx?

Off the top of my head Amgen has bought back somewhere in the area of $20b buying back its own equities over the last 5 to 6 years and I'm not sure it paid off.

Hard for me to say. I have a bias against stock buy backs because I think the money should be used for innovation. Plus I'm admittedly naive to much of the accounting considerations that go into stock buybacks so I don't think I can judge the merits objectively.

What I would say is that if I was an AMGN shareholder, I'd be more inclined to support a purchase like ONXX versus prior ones like MITI / TLRK. Again I might be naive but I'm hard pressed to find out what benefit shareholders received from the TLRK buyout, and development of blinatumomab doesn't seem like it's blazing a rapid path*. So in the ONXX case, it may be a nice change of pace for AMGN investors to get a defined revenue stream rather than their previous experiences with assets that require(d) clinical development prior to any revenues.