AMLN

[bula]

This close is gonna be interesting.  It's a tough hold right now personally, but i'll keep my stop in tight.  It's 17.68 now and flagging between 17.6 and 17.77 for 90 minutes.  OBV is at the high of the day but it is struggling to get past that key level of $17.78. 

So the line is drawn.    Stop at 17.55 and we'll see if that key level of 17.78 can pop.

Bula

[stockpicker]

mentioned positively, for a change, by Cramer... and up it goes to $18.50 AH

(do I trust Cramer? NO!)


--- my next call will be DNDN (riskier than AMLN, though), I'll write a few words about it tomorrow ---

[bula]

Liking my 17.40 buy more and more.  And it was a large position.

Looks like a nice multi-day runner here.  Short cover, upgrades, MAJOR technical reversal events, cnbc pumps and finally the $18-$19 sheep buyers.

I keep moving up my stop, but I think $20 is not unlikely given the overflow of bidders now.

We'll see.

[stockpicker]

just bought a bunch of Call-20 June options for 5 cents

4 days to go and only $2 away

FWIW

[bula]

Sold out 8500 +$1.25.  This was a great call stockpicker.  It may still continue to run, but I got my number so i'm happy.

On to the next gem...... 

[stockpicker]

one day rest, and here we go again!

[stockpicker]

looks like another nice day for AMLN 

[Michael]

Scripts # are out for last week and they are awesome:

6/26/2005 15
6/25/2005 58
6/24/2005 657
6/23/2005 244
6/22/2005 284
6/21/2005 370
6/20/2005 322
6/19/2005 0
6/18/2005 66
6/17/2005 225
6/16/2005 259
6/15/2005 244
6/14/2005 304
6/13/2005 127

When Piper Jaffray gave their $32 target and outperform rating they said: "Byetta needs to exit June with a weekly prescription run rate of around 1,500 to be on track to meet the research firm's $57 million 2005 Byetta estimate". We had 1950 prescriptions last week!

Let's see how the market reacts on the numbers. There is a huge short position that needs to be covered so we will probably see a lot of damage control but I don't think they can hold it down for long!

[Michael]

Beautiful opening this morning - and without being the sharpest chart reader on this board even I can see that the chart looks nice!

As I said there will be a lot of damage control today but within the coming days you will see this one run IMHO.

Mike

[stockpicker]

here we pop again!

[Michael]

axyx posted a comment about the weekly chart being a no-brainer (see chart below).

I have to say that I am normally looking at the daily chart so the weekly chart was an eye-opener for me!

The trend is working for us but the volume is lacking behind. I know this is worrying for a lot of the technicians here but I am not surprised. Everybody is looking forward for the script no. for Symlin and Byetta and you will se the volume pick up (and hopefully the price as well) when they are available.

Goldman Sachs has an outperform rating on AMLN: Amylin: (AMLN, Outperform). Early days, but so far so good on Byetta and Symlin We maintain our estimates on Amylin. As Amylin only began selling Byetta in June, we have not forecast sales for the second quarter. However, initial script trends suggest steady uptake.

Piper Jaffray has an "outperform" rating and $32 price target: after reviewing Byetta's daily prescription order data from IMS. "Given the broad range of Street estimates for Byetta ($35 million to $152 million), we expect daily trends to provide meaningful real-time insight into what has been a controversial launch."

S & P has Amylin rated 5 stars with a 12 month price target of $30: "Following AMLN's first quarter conference call, we continue to maintain our strong buy recommendation on the shares. We remain bullish based on AMLN's first mover advantage, especially regarding Byetta. While the stock has shown weakness, we view the recent pullback as a buying opportunity. With two recent approvals, our confidence that exenatide LAR can be successfully developed has increased. AMLN is conducting a Phase II multi-dose study of LAR. Patients are receiving one of four different dose levels or a placebo. We target potential approval of LAR by the end of 2008."

I have tried to forecast the year end prescription of both Symlin and Byetta (I might post the spreadsheet if I can find out how!) and the analysts forecast seems not only realistic but even conservative.

30 seems to be in the bag. There might be some resistance at 23 though.

Mike

[stockpicker]

for the T/A folks around, please note that last week's 22.5 high was a single trade of 100 (or 1000) shares. it seems more likely than not that the purpose of that trade was to add a virtual resistance point in the chart for the techies. please (try to) ignore it.

[axyx_axyx]

"Price by volume" is getting pretty thin above current price levels allowing great price improvemtent on modest volume. 

[Michael]

for the T/A folks around, please note that last week's 22.5 high was a single trade of 100 (or 1000) shares. it seems more likely than not that the purpose of that trade was to add a virtual resistance point in the chart for the techies. please (try to) ignore it.

Dear Stockpicker,

Good observation, I also remember that odd trade but didn't pay much attention to it as I didn't see much resistance at 2.5.

Now read thestreet.com today: http://biz.yahoo.com/ts/050711/10231663.html?.v=1

Suddenly they see resistance at 2.5 even though they have been very bullish on the stock. This one smells having in mind that thestreet is known to be very well connected to the short community and AMLN has a big short position that needs to be covered!

I don't think they will be successful though. The big players that follows this stock will look through this kind of manipulation.

[Michael]

The resistance at 22.5 as "discovered" by thestreet.com was indeed artificial, the stock at least surged through it and have never looked back again. Now it might serve as a support (even though it might be an artificial support!)

Instead it seems like we have three young and vigilant white soldiers in the chart, which is a bullish reversal sign from the small retreat we had at the start of last week. (Hmmm... wonder if we actually can talk about a reversal in such a bullish trend! Decide for yourself - you can read about the three white soldiers here: http://stockcharts.com/education/GlossaryT.html)

This up trend started in June when AMLN received FDA approval for Symlin and Byetta against diabetes. The analysts are very positive for the future of these drugs and have quite aggressive sales targets (I posted those in a previous post). This is hardly surprising if you look at the profile of the drugs: they decrease HbA1c, decrease postprandial glucose peaks, help patients lose weight, decrease the inflammatory response that is implicated in many diabetes complications, decrease the dependency on insulin, and only have their effect when they are needed. No other class of diabetes drugs, approved or in trials, can make all those claims.

Byetta has one more bullish effect: it RESTORES the islet function, which is responsible for the body's production of Insulin.

Byetta has a very interesting history, which involves the Gila Monster, a large pharmaceutical company that made the mistake of the century and another large pharmaceutical company that was close to do the same. But I have told too many long stories lately......

You might have overlooked an interesting side effect. Most patients who are on the drugs experience weight loss. Now this is interesting because there are only very light side effects of the drug. AMLN is therefore performing test to prepare it for approval against Obesity. So AMLN has two drugs with a very promising future in two of the largest and fastest growing segments in the pharmaceutical universe. Well from my point of view that explains the chart below!

Anyhow prescription numbers has started to come in. They seem to be even more bullish than the analyst's forecasts. The week-on-week revenue growth is more than 40%. (yes - week-on-week not year-on-year!). I have made a small spreadsheet that forecast revenue based on subscriptions numbers (it would still like to post this if I can figure out how – it comes in handy when you want to check the analysts updates). The revenue will reach more than $1 billion in November this year if the weekly growth continues at 40%.

The growth will start to slow down but you still have a very attractive company with world-class products in the largest and fastest growing segments of the drug market so I expect the present up trend to continue for some time. The analyst's targets are in the thirties but I would expect to see some reiteration of these when the prescription numbers comes in.