Is it Time to Buy Amgen?

Maybe it’s time to buy Amgen. Yeah, you heard right.

Many of Amgen’s shareholders—including the CFO—have scuttled over the past few months, frightened away by the seemingly endless series of blows to hit the US biotech. That’s why the stock’s at a year-low and down 30% since the start of 2007.

Over the last week, a dozen or so further percentage points were knocked off by May 10th's FDA advisory committee meeting and by the CMS’s proposal on Monday to curb Medicare payments for Aranesp in certain cancer patients.

Can it get any worse? Apparently some of Wall Street’s analysts think so. Several cut their ratings on the stock last week, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, including long-time bulls Lazard Capital Markets.

Now, we’re not analysts. (Nor are we shareholders, nor are we share-tipping.) But, let’s face it, analysts have been known to be wrong. Dare we suggest there are whiffs of panic? Perhaps hints of lemming behavior—the slope on this once-loved stock has reversed now for, what, six months, so game’s up?

Now granted, there may be just one or two more potential hitches—the most significant being FDA’s planned fall meeting to discuss the use of EPO drugs in kidney failure. Nephrology makes up a far larger chunk of Amgen’s $6.6 billion EPO sales than oncology, and any ruling here could hit both Epogen and Aranesp.

But Amgen’s already trading at an almost 15% discount to its biopharma peers based on estimated 2007 EPS. And, as they say, in every cloud is a silver lining.

For one thing, any bad for EPO drugs is bad for Amgen’s competitors, too—including Roche's Mircera. Look out on May 20th , the Mircera PDUFA date: a bumpy ride for Roche may help Amgen.

And on a more positive note, Phase III pipeline drug denosumab may be the best in the entire biopharma sector pipeline, if you believe Mark Schoenebaum at Bear Stearns. “It could be a $5 billion drug, Amgen’s biggest ever,” he told IN VIVO last month. The first data is due by year-end. And if you believe Amgen, there’s also a wicked Phase II pipeline tucked away somewhere—if you haven’t heard about it yet, you will soon.

If investors don't start buying Amgen again soon, maybe, just maybe, the stock will hit a low that an acquisition-mad Big Pharma can't resist. The idea is around, if improbable.

But then, Merck & Co. came back, didn’t it?