Mad Hedge Technology Letter
March 9, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY ZOOM HAS BEEN ZOOMING)
(ZM), (VMW), (JNJ), ($COMPQ)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
March 9, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY ZOOM HAS BEEN ZOOMING)
(ZM), (VMW), (JNJ), ($COMPQ)
One man's heaven is another man's hell.
Zoom Video Communications (ZM) is the hero of video conferencing software.
Few companies are navigating the coronavirus situation better than Zoom. Their better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and forecast is a great omen for the coronavirus driving future demand for the company’s remote-work tools.
Even without the coronavirus, the company is doing spectacularly.
(ZM) delivers best in show teleconferencing services including video meetings, voice, webinars and chat across desktop and mobile devices, and has been the beneficiary of the dreaded coronavirus that has quarantined workers forcing them to rely on Zoom’s video app tools.
The virus has bolted by the 100,000 customer mark with at least 3,500 Corona deaths.
The panic has been overblown, and the same hysteria has seeped into the broader tech market triggering deep selloffs in almost every tech company.
The elevated awareness and adoption of the company’s video conferencing platform will allow the company to post an even better performance next quarter.
The migration into the company’s free app remains robust and it is unclear whether those users can be converted to paying ones. However, paid growth is still hitting on all cylinders.
Revenue crushed it at 78% to $188.3 million from $105.8 million a year ago.
In total, sales in 2019 were $622.7 million, up 88% year-over-year.
Zoom Communications is attracting more influential customers with 81,900 accounts with at least 10 employees, a 61% uptrend from the past year.
VMware Inc. (VMW) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are two of Zoom’s largest accounts.
Zoom's first-quarter revenue guidance was strong as well predicting between $199 million and $201 million.
Another growth lever will be the mobile segment which has signed up more than 2,900 accounts with more than 10 employees in its first year after launch and will shortly be available in 18 countries.
Total operating margins surpassed expectation of 10%, by more than doubling, to 20.4%.
Ultimately, Zoom's robust Q4 results and guidance underline the company's smooth pathway to elevated revenue drivers as the world goes into pandemic mode because of Covid-19.
It was somewhat underwhelming that management cited a limited revenue benefit from the situation with a go-forward increase in costs as usage increases.
That could have been sorted out more delicately and keeping costs down is one of management’s responsibilities.
The positives still outweigh any minor negatives as the company has been able to capitalize by seizing mind share and expanding the funnel.
Zoom Communications has not been able to escape the recent volatility in shares as the 12% boost from a positive earnings report was met with a 13% haircut the following day as the broader Nasdaq was pummeled.
The Covid-19 virus is delivering agony to investors as the swings are simply hard to trade in and out of.
Making it even more difficult is fogging clarity breeding uncertainty stoking wild risk-off moves even when the central bank announced an emergency half-point rate cut.
The current issue is that short term, markets can behave as irrational as ever and trading algorithms are programmed to digest headlines by not only the volume but the potency and relevancy as well.
If every news wire sent out a story that free money was dropping from the sky, the market would be up 10% irrespective of whether it is true or not.
That is the world we live in where over 85% of the trading decisions and volume are executed by automated software and the exaggeration doesn’t discriminate in which direction it trends in.
So, we are stuck in this negative feedback loop where national headlines are almost entirely concentrated on the coronavirus and that is mainly the data that is fed into short-term trading algorithms.
Unfortunately, the tech market weakness is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and new headlines of Northern Italy being quarantined and New York announcing a state of emergency is poised to be the next catalyst for a volatile upcoming trading week ahead.
Short-term traders need to understand that this isn’t just a “buy the dip” event and the deep in the money call spreads that had cushions of 8-10% were blown out in just a few days.
Long term investors should be using every dramatic selloff to add slightly to their positions incrementally lowering their cost basis.
It is hard to know when the coronavirus phenomenon will pass by but at the speed in which we are trending, U.S. school cancelations and further cities and states announcing highly negative events are in the pipeline for next week.
The bottoming event could eventually come in the form of US Corona cases topping 10,000 or cancelling the Olympics in Tokyo, but until then, the negative health headlines appear to be the new normal for the short-term and until we are fully washed out.
Global Market Comments
March 5, 2020
Fiat Lux
SPECIAL MARKET BOTTOM ISSUE
Featured Trade:
(FRIDAY, APRIL 17 SAN FRANCISCO STRATEGY LUNCHEON),
(A LEAP PORTFOLIO TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM),
(TEN LONG-TERM BIOTECH & HEALTHCARE LEAPS TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM)
(UNH), (HUM), (AMGN), (BIIB), (JNJ), (PFE), (BMY)
Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
March 5, 2020
Fiat Lux
SPECIAL MARKET BOTTOM ISSUE
Featured Trade:
(TEN LONG TERM BIOTECH & HEALTH CARE LEAPS TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM)
(UNH), (HUM), (AMGN), (BIIB), (JNJ), (PFE), (BMY)
Joe Biden’s romp over Bernie Sanders in the Tuesday Democratic primary takes the lid off on the entire biotech and healthcare sector. Sanders has promised to dismantle the entire sector by promising Medicare for all and banning private coverage.
Sanders was also about to take a cudgel to drug pricing. While Sanders was leading in the primary, the threats hung over the industry like an 800-pound gorilla.
Yesterday, Sanders went down in flames. You can see this clearly in the price action of Humana (HUM), which rose a ballistic 14.44% yesterday. Similarly, United Health Group (UNH) was up a monster 10.72%.
It is safe to say that the bottom is in for biotech and healthcare stocks.
I am often asked how professional hedge fund traders invest their personal money. They all do the exact same thing. They wait for a market crash like we are seeing now and buy the longest-term LEAPs possible for their favorite names.
The reasons are very simple. The risk of a LEAP is limited. You can’t lose any more than you put in. At the same time, they permit enormous amounts of leverage.
Two years out, the longest maturity available for most LEAPs, allow plenty of time for the world and the markets to get back on an even keel. Recessions, pandemics, hurricanes, oil shocks, interest rate spikes, and political instability all go away within two years and pave the way for dramatic stock market recoveries.
You just put them away and forget about them. Wake me up when it is 2022.
I put together this portfolio using the following parameters. I set the strike prices just short of the all-time highs set two weeks ago. I went for the maximum maturity. I used today’s prices. And of course, I picked the names that have the best long-term outlooks.
If you buy LEAPs at these prices and the stocks all go to new highs, then you should earn an average 229% profit from an average stock price increase of only 11.4%. That is a return 20 times greater than the underlying stock gain. And let’s face it. None of the companies below are going to zero, ever. Now you know why hedge fund traders only employ this strategy.
There is a smarter way to execute this portfolio. Put in throw-away crash bids at levels so low they will only get executed on the next 1,000 point down day in the Dow Average.
You can play around with the strike prices all you want. Going farther out of the money increase your returns, but raises your risk as well. Going closer to the money reduces risk and returns, but the gains are still a multiple of the underlying stock.
Buying when everyone else is throwing up on their shoes is always the best policy. That way your return will rise to ten times the move in the underlying stock.
Amgen (AMGN) - January 21 2022 $235-$240 bull call spread at $3.68 delivers a 172% gain with the stock at $245, up 14% from the current level
Biogen (BIIB) - January 21 2022 $365-$375 bull call spread at $3.89 delivers a 157% gain with the stock at $375, up 14% from the current level
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) - January 21 2022 $150-$155 bull call spread at $1.63 delivers a 206% gain with the stock at $155, up 8.3% from the current level
Pfizer (PFE) - January 21 2022 $40-$45 bull call spread at $1.05 delivers a 376% gain with the stock at $40.60, up 11.5% from the current level
Bristol Meyers Squibb (BMY) - January 21 2022 $65-$70 bull call spread at $1.50 delivers a 233% gain with the stock at $68, up 11.40% from the current level
Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
February 6, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JOHNSON & JOHNSON JOINS THE CORONAVIRUS BATTLE)
(JNJ), (PRVB)
It looks like Johnson & Johnson isn’t walking away from the biotechnology sector anytime soon.
News of a potential exit came following the company’s move to cut down on its investment on Proventio Bio (PRVB) from 6.4%, which is around 2.4 million shares, to a 2.4% stake or 1.2 million. Further reports revealed that JNJ might sell its remaining shares soon.
JNJ’s reemergence on the front page of the biotechnology sector comes in the wake of the overwhelming fear courtesy of the coronavirus, which has already taken the lives of nearly 500 people and placed more than 24,000 patients in hospitals worldwide.
In the company’s recent announcement, JNJ executives disclosed that they are also throwing their hat in the ring in the search for a speedy vaccine to combat the deadly coronavirus.
This means that JNJ is joining Gilead Sciences (GILD), AbbVie (ABBV), and Moderna (MRNA) in the very short list of companies aiming to achieve that.
Taking a page off its success in creating a vaccine for the Ebola outbreak, JNJ is confident that it can not only come up with a coronavirus vaccine but also be able to scale it up the moment they receive FDA approval.
For context, JNJ took roughly six months to come up with an Ebola vaccine, scale the treatment, and deliver it to the public. The company spent around the same time in its efforts to produce a Zika virus vaccine.
As for the coronavirus vaccine, JNJ expects to shave off two to three months from the Ebola and Zika timelines.
While no concrete report on the progress of this initiative has been released, reports point to JNJ working with Chinese researchers to use HIV drugs to treat the widely spreading respiratory disease.
How will this impact JNJ’s performance in 2020?
For one, success on this front would definitely increase the earnings estimate for this year especially since JNJ’s fourth-quarter results failed to meet expectations on the top line. Meanwhile, the company beat the bottom line by one penny, recording $1.88 per share.
As expected, the talcum powder lawsuits continued to exert pressure on the company’s consumer goods segment.
Sales of the baby care products amounted to $421 million, exhibiting an 11% decline compared to the previous performance during the same period in 2018.
Blockbuster prostate cancer drug Zytiga has been struggling with the rise of generic rivals since 2018, slashing 13.8% off its fourth-quarter sales to $677 million.
Meanwhile, the declining sales of psoriasis moneymaker Remicade didn’t cause any major decline in the total revenue of JNJ’s pharmaceutical segment. This comes as a surprise since biosimilar competition has been gaining on the drug, cutting its fourth-quarter sales by 16.4% year over year to record $1 billion.
Despite the so-so results, the report still provided glimmers of hope that all but guarantees that JNJ shares won’t plummet in the future.
In fact, JNJ’s total fourth-quarter revenue increased by 1.7% thanks to the new products released as precautionary measures to pick up the slack from the sales decline of both Zytiga and Remicade.
For instance, psoriasis treatment Stelara managed to impress with a 17.7% increase year over year to hit $1.7 billion.
Another recently launched psoriasis injection, Tremfya, demonstrated a whopping 53.9% jump to contribute $270 million in the total revenue in the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, younger drugs like blood cancer treatments Darzalex and Imbruvica pitched in $1.7 billion, showing off a 32.5% improvement in sales.
So although it’s unlikely that the stock will be able to produce top-line growth in the double digits as often as we’d like, JNJ remains an attractive investment.
One of its most alluring features is its diversified portfolio, which reaches across numerous business lines in the healthcare and biotechnology sectors.
This diversification has become a pillar of the company, ensuring that it doesn’t topple even in times of economic downturns.
The fact that it offers a 2.6% dividend yield makes JNJ a dream come true among income-seeking investors. It also doesn’t hurt that JNJ has consistently raised its dividends annually for the past 57 years, making it the most stable and secure out there today.
Even its lawsuits don’t seem to have any severe impact on the company’s performance since JNJ managed scores of legal cases in the past and constantly managed to come out in one piece. Taking its history as an indication, JNJ should remain as one of the top stocks in the years to come.
Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
January 7, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHAT’S NEXT IN THE BIOTECH PIPELINE?)
(ITCI), (AIMT), (BIO), (JNJ)
Investing in biotech stocks demands prudence combined with a sprinkling of optimism. This means taking in announcements from companies bragging about potential blockbuster drugs with a grain of salt.
After all, a single misstep towards gaining FDA approval could easily set back any progress, erase any hope of salvaging the discovery, and eventually, send their share prices spiraling down.
On the other hand, choosing a biotech stock that would deliver on its promise means reaping rich dividends in the future.
With all the developments in store though, it’s hard to see why 2020 can’t easily go down as The Year of Biotech. Here are some things that caught my eye.
Christmas came early for Intra-Cellular Therapies (ITCI) as its long-awaited schizophrenia drug, Caplyta, received the green light from the FDA.
Although it has taken a few years for the biotech firm to announce the results of its schizophrenia trials, its investors are confident that Calpyta’s journey from this highly sought approval to marketing will be smooth sailing.
While the number of people suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is not as many as those facing major depressive disorder, treatments for the former conditions remain lacking. In fact, health specialists have been looking for more convenient options -- one that won’t hinder the daily lives of patients taking it.
This blockbuster drug, pegged as a safer and better alternative to Johnson and Johnson’s (JNJ) Risperidone, is expected to expand Lumateperone’s reach in the mental health market.
Despite earning an early victory, ITCI is already gearing up to tweak Calpyta’s indications and seek bipolar depression approvals as well. At the moment, this schizophrenia drug is estimated to cross $1 billion in sales following its 2020 launch in the market.
Meanwhile, there’s another big market drug that’s projected to make a major launch in 2020. Aimmune Therapeutics’ (AIMT) AR101. Otherwise known Palforzia, this will be the first-ever treatment for peanut allergies.
Although there’s no price tag released yet, a year’s supply of Palforzia is estimated to cost $4,200 per patient.
These pull-apart capsules, which are basically comprised of unmodified peanut flour plus a bunch of inactive ingredients, aim to provide medication for a food allergy that affects one in 13 children today.
The FDA is expected to release its decision on Palforzia sometime in January 2020, so it’ll definitely be a prosperous New Year for its investors.
Another biotech company that’s set to make a splash in a lucrative market is Bluebird Bio (BIO).
At the moment, investors are chomping at the bit for good news concerning the company’s future crown jewel: genetic blood disease treatment Zynteglo.
In 2019, Zynteglo gained approval in the European market. Now, Bluebird is setting its sights to also conquer the US market as one in every 100,000 people is afflicted by this rare condition.
More than that, the only approved therapy for this genetic blood ailment is a blood transfusion done regularly.
Given the rarity of the disease and the efficacy of the treatment, Zynteglo’s price tag will obviously be on the high end.
This therapy is expected to cost roughly $1.8 million in total for every patient. To ease the burden though, Bluebird shared that it’s open to four- and five-year installment plans. That puts every gene therapy infusion at $355,000 per session.
Despite this massive expense, Bluebird actually believes that it’s selling its treatment at a discount of about 15% compared to the actual market value of $2.1 million.
This conviction comes from the fact that the company estimates adding 22 quality-adjusted life years to the lives of every successfully treated patient.
All three biotech stocks could easily skyrocket, especially Bluebird Bio. As for Aimmune Therapeutics, the company is currently financially healthy so it shouldn’t encounter any trouble meeting obligations. Meanwhile, ITCI has been gifting its investors with early Christmas presents since it first released promising results of its schizophrenia study.
Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
October 1, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE PLAYERS GUIDE TO BIOTECH INVESTING)
(AMGN), (PFE), (NOVN), (ABBV), (ABT),
(AGN), (ROG), (GSK), (CELG), (JNJ), (BMY)
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