Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
March 25, 2021
Fiat Lux
FEATURED TRADE:
DON’T MISS THE BOAT ON THIS BEST OF BREED BIOTECHNOLOGY STOCK
(AMGN), (MRNA), (PFE), (BNTX), (JNJ), (LLY), (ABBV), (BMY), (FPRX), (BGNE)
The past few weeks have been hectic for the healthcare industry, with Moderna (MRNA), Pfizer (PFE), BioNTech (BNTX), and even Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) working hard to manufacture and distribute their COVID-19 vaccines all over the world.
There’s one major player in the healthcare industry that has been out of the spotlight for quite some time: Amgen (AMGN).
While Amgen has been doing its part from the sidelines by helping out companies like Eli Lilly (LLY) with the manufacturing of their COVID-19 drugs, it looks like investors are flocking towards businesses that allocate more resources toward fighting off the pandemic.
In fact, JNJ recently reached a new high at $170 per share.
Nonetheless, I think investors are missing out on a great opportunity by ignoring Amgen these days.
The biotech world, which basically involves formulating drugs and treatments for living organisms, was somewhat limited back in 1980.
Over the past decades, however, this industry has shifted and managed to successfully launch groundbreaking drugs commercially.
Before, only a handful of legacy companies had occupied this space. Now, so many up-and-coming companies try to conquer the biotech world.
For context, an FDA report in 2019 showed that 64% of drugs approved in the previous year were developed by biotech companies.
Moving forward, it’s reasonable to say that the biotech industry will continue to come up with breakthrough treatments for rare and complex conditions compared to our traditional pharmaceutical companies.
Actually, this sector has been hot in recent years, with companies like AbbVie (ABBV) and Celgene, now with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), coming up with mega-blockbuster treatments, such as Humira and Revlimid, that rake in billions in sales annually.
Among them, Amgen has emerged as one of the most consistent and aggressive players in the biotech world, with competitors still struggling to topple some of its products after decades of being in the market.
This biotech giant has also been busy boosting its pipeline of newly developed treatments. It’s even bolstering its biosimilar lineup to ensure its dominance in the sector.
Last year, Amgen’s revenue rose by 9%, with more growth indicators lighting the way for a brighter future for the company.
While Amgen has been working on many conditions, its portfolio still looks focused on particular diseases.
In 2020 alone, Amgen’s seven blockbusters each generated over $1 billion in revenue. Among these, four managed to rake in more than $2 billion in annual sales.
Amgen’s impressive lineup of drugs includes psoriatic arthritis treatment Enbrel, osteoporosis and bone cancer injection Prolia, and even newcomer heart disease medication Repatha.
With its rivals nipping at the heels of its first-generation blockbusters like Neupogen, Amgen has been hustling to find ways to reinvent itself.
Apart from developing new drugs, the company has been looking into acquisitions to sustain its position at the top.
Recently, Amgen has been doubling down on its newest shining star: Otezla.
Otezla was one of the company’s biggest purchases, with Amgen acquiring this drug for a whopping $13.4 billion from Celgene in August 2019.
In 2019, Otezla sales rose by 25% to reach $1.6 billion. By 2020, the drug generated $2.2 billion in sales, showing off a 36.5% jump.
Over the next few years, Amgen estimates that Otezla sales will climb by over 10% annually.
Riding the momentum of not only Otezla but its entire portfolio and programs in the pipeline, Amgen aims to dominate the immunology sector.
Among the candidates in Amgen’s pipeline, the most promising is its lung cancer medication Sotorasib, which should complete Phase 2 in the first half of 2021.
Meanwhile, Amgen’s latest deal outside its own pipeline is the $1.9 billion acquisition of Five Prime Therapeutics (FPRX), which is a small biotech company developing treatments for stomach cancers. The agreement should be finalized by June 2021.
Five Prime’s experimental treatment, Bemarituzumab, perfectly aligns with the other stomach cancer medications queued in Amgen’s pipeline.
If this proves successful, then Bemarituzumab will be a strong contender against Bristol-Myers Squibb’s blockbuster treatment Opdivo.
While Opdivo has been in the market longer, Five Prime’s candidate has consistently shown stronger and more promising results since the trials started.
Prior to its deal with Prime Five, Amgen acquired a 20% stake in Beijing-based biotech company BeiGene (BGNE). This is a telling move as it indicates the company’s efforts to expand its reach in Asia, particularly in China and Japan.
Another revenue stream that Amgen has been pushing for expansion is its biosimilars sector.
The company released its first-ever blockbuster, Epogen, in 1989. Since then, this anemia drug has been a top seller. However, biosimilar competition eventually caused a decline in its sales starting in 2015.
Learning from the fall of Epogen in the hands of biosimilars, Amgen decided to turn its weakness into its strength.
Since 2015, the company has been expanding its work on biosimilars. In that year alone, Amgen developed 29 biosimilars for its own products and launched 18 more to compete with other companies.
To date, biosimilars have been generating at least $2 billion in revenues, with 10 more queued in Amgen’s pipeline.
Considering the accelerated growth of the biotechnology sector, now is not the time to count out Amgen.
Today, Amgen has transformed itself into one of the leaders in the biotech world, generating over $25 billion in revenue.
Since 1988, the company has only reported a decline in its year-over-year revenue three times: 2009, 2018, and 2019.
This performance shows tangible proof that Amgen is not a “one-hit-wonder” type of biotech stock. Instead, it demonstrates its capacity to generate solid earnings and sustainability.
Currently, Amgen trades at a price-to-earnings multiple that’s actually 40% lower than the average S&P 500 stock. Its EPS is estimated to rise in the high single digits in the next several years.
Simply looking at its 2020 fiscal report, it’s obvious that Amgen delivered an impressive performance considering the recession and the pandemic.
The company also continues to reward its shareholders with double dividend increases plus an aggressive repurchase program, which Amgen plans to spend roughly $3 billion to $4 billion.
Recently, the stock has been trading at a roughly 30% discount. This is a real bargain considering everything Amgen has to offer.
Global Market Comments
March 25, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(HOW TO EXECUTE A VERTICAL BULL CALL SPREAD)
(AAPL)
(TESTIMONIAL)
(DINING WITH THE BOTTOM 20%)
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Ontario, Canada
Occasionally, you have to tear yourself away from your screens and get involved in the real world.
So, a recent Saturday found me driving a carload of Boy Scouts to the Oakland Food Bank, a local distributor of free meals for the poor and homeless.
I learned a long time ago that nonprofits can be the most efficient participants in an economy. They have to or die because they can’t afford to pay anyone. Look no further than the Boy Scouts which runs a million-man national organization off of the $2 a month dues contributed by its juvenile members.
The Oakland Food Bank did not disappoint.
After a brief training video, I was ushered into a vast warehouse and bluntly asked “Corn or potatoes.” No management role here. I opted for potatoes, as my somewhat large hands were ideal for picking up several spuds at once.
What I ended up doing was breaking open 50-pound bags of potatoes fresh from the farm in Idaho and repackaging them into ten-pound carriers ideal for a single family. Others were inspecting sweet potatoes, corn, and peas. My task was made all the easier by a sound system blasting vintage sixties rock music.
It is amazing that the demand for free food is so great just across the bay, or one BART stop away from the world’s wealthiest and highest paid city. The Oakland Food Bank feeds 20% of Alameda County, or about 320,000 people a day. When the federal government shut down in January, the Oakland Food Bank was there sending truckloads of meals to the nearest base to feed military families.
I learned at the recent SALT conference in Las Vegas that 50% of the country could not pay an emergency expenditure of $500. This is where the food was going.
Certainly, the organization has grown a lot since the summer of love in 1967 when I stood in long lines to get doled a cup of stew of indeterminate origin by an organization then known as the “Diggers.” San Francisco was inundated by 100,000 kids that year, camping out in Golden Gate Park and totally swamping local services.
The Oakland Food Bank is now a massive outfit bringing together 17,000 volunteers donating 103,000 hours last year to feed the hungry. Even at minimum age, the value of that labor was $824,000. Semis from throughout the west were unloading thousands of pallets of food from farms, stores, and manufacturers.
A lot of the vegetables I saw were fine, they just did not conform to the picture-perfect version that Safeway requires for its produce aisles.
A market has sprung up to meet this. The food bank buys substandard potatoes direct from farmers at ten cents a pound, versus the $1.16 a pound in supermarkets. The China trade war has also made available millions of tons of foodstuffs available at throwaway prices, from rice to almonds, or corn and soybeans.
The work became more tedious when the music shifted to contemporary pop and I was sorting my 10,000 potatoes. But then the morning shift mercifully ended, and I was left to collect my far-flung scouts.
On the way out, our organizers told us we 60 volunteers had created 15,000 meals. Everyone cheered and headed for the door. I reminded my kids that if they didn’t go to college, they too would be doing this all day, every day….for $8 an hour and no benefits. They gave me a sober look.
We’ll be back again next month. I can’t wait to see what I get to sort next.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
March 24, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE METAVERSE HAS ARRIVED)
(RBLX)
The saga of Roblox (RBLX) began in 1989 when founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel programmed a 2D simulated physics lab called Interactive Physics, which would later go on to influence their approach to constructing the foundations of Roblox.
Students across the world used Interactive Physics to see how two cars would crash, or how they could build destructible houses.
In starting Roblox in 2004, the founding team desired to replicate the inspiration of imagination and creativity we saw in Interactive Physics on a much more extreme scale by ushering in a new category of human interaction that did not exist at the time.
People from around the world come to Roblox every day to connect with friends and together they play, learn, communicate, and explore in 3D digital worlds that are entirely user-generated, built by Roblox’s community of nearly 8 million active developers.
This is a new cyber world which humans are very much a part of.
I call this emerging category “human co-experience,” which is considered to be the new form of social interaction that was envisioned back in 2004.
Roblox’s platform is powered by user-generated content and draws inspiration from gaming, entertainment, social media, and even toys.
Some refer to this world as the “metaverse”, a term often used to describe the concept of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces in a virtual universe.
The idea of a metaverse has been written about by science fiction authors now for over 30 years.
With the advent of robust consumer computing devices, cloud computing, and high bandwidth internet connections, the concept of the metaverse is coming to fruition.
The Roblox human co-experience platform consists of the Roblox Client, the Roblox Studio, and the Roblox Cloud.
Roblox Client is the application that allows users to explore 3D digital worlds.
Roblox Studio is the toolset that allows developers and creators to build, publish, and operate 3D experiences and other content accessed with the Roblox Client.
Roblox Cloud includes the services and infrastructure that power human co-experience platform.
The company’s mission is to build a human co-experience platform and now investors can buy the stock betting on the value appreciation and monetization of this metaverse.
The hybrid experience is spurring a wave of new popularity and running through the Roblox numbers, it’s easy to understand why this stock that just went public through a SPAC will certainly explode higher.
The numbers are a classic roadmap of how tech growth numbers should behave and dream to behave.
They combine significant bookings and revenue with strong unit economics, free cash flow generation, and high daily active user (DAU) growth.
What are a few tantalizing growth metrics that whet investor’s appetite?
DAUs on Roblox grew 47%, from 12.0 million DAUs in 2018 to 17.6 million in 2019, and grew 82%, from 17.1 million in the nine months that ended September 30, 2019 to 31.1 million in the nine months the ended September 30, 2020.
Hours engaged on Roblox grew 45%, from 9.4 billion in 2018 to 13.7 billion in 2019, and grew 122%, from 10.0 billion in the nine months that ended September 30, 2019 to 22.2 billion in the nine months that ended September 30, 2020.
Revenue grew 56% from $312.8 million in 2018 to $488.2 million in 2019 and grew 68% from $349.9 million in the nine months that ended September 30, 2019 to $588.7 million in the nine months that ended September 30, 2020.
The latest revenue performance shows 2020 revenue expanding at 82% year over year to almost $1 billion in annual sales and 2021 is slated to be the year where annual revenue hits around the $3 billion mark at year-end.
How is Roblox planning to outperform in 2021?
Platform Extension: Significant investments in high fidelity avatars, more realistic experiences, 3D spatial audio technology, and other social features. These investments should enable Roblox to support human co-experience.
Age Demographic Expansion: As a result of platform extension, developers and creators are now able to build higher quality experiences and content that appeal to an older age demographic.
International Reach: I believe there is significant runway in unsaturated markets in the world for Roblox to grow by the same organic, word-of-mouth user and developer growth that U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom experienced.
Monetization: I predict that there is significant potential to increase monetization by actively working with developer and creator community to help them improve their monetization methods. Second, Roblox recently introduced a subscription service, Roblox Premium, which will increase conversion of free users to paying users and encourage the retention of paying users. Third, digital marketing could be a monetization tool that could attract many marketing budgets as the platform matures.
Jump on the bandwagon before others find out about this company. We are still in the early innings of Roblox’s trajectory, and this is the ultimate stay-at-home economy buy and hold stock.
“Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.” – Said Co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb Brian Chesky
Global Market Comments
March 24, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(FIVE TECH STOCKS TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM),
(AAPL), (AMZN), (SQ), (ROKU), (MSFT)
I have prudently ignored investing in tech stocks for the past seven months, and justly so.
Tech has been peddling hard on the business front, but the shares have been going nowhere in a hurry. Many of the leading names are down 30%-50% from their peak prices.
As a result, they are rapidly approaching value territory. When growth becomes cheap and value gets expensive, it’s time to shift from one side of the barbell strategy to the other.
I’m not saying that tech stocks have bottomed. But we are getting close, perhaps within 10% in the best names. It’s now time to lists of stocks to pounce on when the big turn inevitably comes.
Fortunately, Arthur Henry’s Mad Hedge Technology Letter has already done that job for you. See below his list of recommendations.
By the way, if you want to subscribe to Arthur’s groundbreaking, cutting-edge service, please click here.
It’s the best read on technology investing in the entire market.
You don’t want to catch a falling knife, but at the same time, diligently prepare yourself to buy the best discounts of the year.
Here are the names of five of the best stocks to slip into your portfolio in no particular order when the next downside whoosh occurs.
Remember, tech ALWAYS comes back.
Apple
Steve Job’s creation is weathering the gale-fore storm quite well. Apple has been on a tear reconfirming its smooth pivot to software services tilted tech company. The timing is perfect as China has enhanced its smartphone technology by leaps and bounds.
Even though China cannot produce the top-notch quality phones that Apple can, they have caught up to the point local Chinese are reasonably content with its functionality.
That hasn’t stopped Apple from vigorously growing revenue in greater China 20% YOY during a feverishly testy political climate that has their supply chain in Beijing’s crosshairs.
The pivot is picking up steam and Apple’s revenue will morph into a software company with software and services eventually contributing 25% to total revenue.
They aren’t just an iPhone company anymore. Apple has led the charge with stock buybacks and will gobble up a total of $200 billion in shares by the end of 2021. Get into this stock while you can as entry points are few and far between.
Oh, and their 5G phones are selling like hotcakes. Some one billion need to be replaced to bring consumers into the new high-speed 5G world.
Amazon (AMZN)
This is the best company in America hands down and commands 5% of total American retail sales or 49% of American e-commerce sales. The pandemic has vastly accelerated the growth of their business.
It became the second company to eclipse a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud business pioneered the cloud industry and had an almost 10-year head start to craft it into its cash cow. Amazon has branched off into many other businesses since then oozing innovation and is a one-stop wrecking ball.
The newest direction is the smart home where they seek to place every single smart product around the Amazon Echo, the smart speaker sitting nicely inside your house. A smart doorbell was the first step along with recently investing in a pre-fab house start-up aimed at building smart homes.
Microsoft (MSFT)
The optics in 2021 look utterly different from when Bill Gates was roaming around the corridors in the Redmond, Washington headquarter and that is a good thing.
Current CEO Satya Nadella has turned this former legacy company into the 2nd largest cloud competitor to Amazon and then some.
Microsoft Azure is rapidly catching up to Amazon in the cloud space because of the Amazon-effect working in reverse. Companies don’t want to store proprietary data to Amazon’s server farm when they could possibly destroy them down the road. Microsoft is mainly a software company and gained the trust of many big companies especially retailers.
Microsoft is also on the vanguard of the gaming industry taking advantage of the young generation’s fear of outside activity. Xbox-related revenue is up 36% YOY, and its gaming division is a $10.3 billion per year business.
Microsoft Azure grew 87% YOY last quarter. The previous quarter saw Azure rocket by 98%. Shares are cheaper than Amazon and almost as potent.
Square (SQ)
CEO Jack Dorsey is doing everything right at this fin-tech company blazing a trail right to the doorsteps of the traditional banks.
The various businesses they have on offer make me think of Amazon’s portfolio because of the supreme diversity. The Cash App is a peer-to-peer money transfer program that cohabits with a bitcoin investing function on the same smartphone app.
Square has targeted the smaller businesses first and is a godsend for these entrepreneurs who lack immense capital to create a financial and payment infrastructure. Not only do they provide the physical payment systems for restaurant chains, but they also offer payroll services and other small loans.
The pipeline of innovation is strong with upper management mentioning they are considering stock trading products and other bank-like products. Wall Street bigwigs must be shaking in their boots.
Roku (ROKU)
Benefitting from the broad-based migration from cable tv to online steaming and cord-cutting, Roku is perfectly placed to delectably harvest the spoils.
This uber-growth company offers an over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform along with the necessary hardware and picks up revenue by selling digital ads.
Founder and CEO Anthony Woods owns 21 million shares of his brainchild and insistently notes that he has no interest in selling his company to a Netflix or Apple.
Viewers are reaffirming the obsession with on-demand online streaming content with hours streamed on the platform increasing 58% to 5.5 billion.
The Roku platform can be bought for just $30 and is easy to set-up. Roku enjoys the lead in the over-the-top (OTT) streaming device industry controlling 37% of the market share leading Amazon’s Fire Stick at 28%.
The runway is long as (OTT) boxes nestle cozily in only 40% of American homes with broadband, up from a paltry 6% in 2010.
They are consistently absent from the backbiting and jawboning the FANGs consistently find themselves in partly because they do not create original content and they are not an offshoot from a larger parent tech firm.
This growth stock experiences the same type of volatility as Square.
