Shares of $SRPT Halved on FDA Denial

We’re getting multiple downgrades this morning after the FDA voted down SRPT’s muscular dystrophy drug, despite massive outpouring of support by trial patients and their families.

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (SRPT), a developer of innovative RNA-based therapeutics, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee (PCNSC) met to review the new drug application (NDA) for eteplirsen as a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy amenable to exon 51 skipping. The advisory committee voted 6-7 against the finding of substantial evidence from adequate and well controlled studies that show that eteplirsen induces production of dystrophin to a level that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit (FDA Question #2). The advisory committee voted 3 – 7, with three abstentions, against finding substantial evidence based on the clinical results of the single historically controlled study (Study 201/202) that eteplirsen is effective for treatment of DMD (FDA Question #7).

“We would like to thank the hundreds of patients and families who participated in the discussion today, underscoring the critical unmet need of people living with Duchenne.” said Edward Kaye, M.D., Sarepta’s interim chief executive officer and chief medical officer. “We appreciated the opportunity to present our data to the advisory committee panel and will continue to work with FDA as they complete their review of the eteplirsen NDA. Today more than ever, we remain committed to our mission of bringing a treatment to the Duchenne community.”

Shares are getting destroyed in the pre-market.

This is fucking madness. China has a massive NPL (non-performing loans) problem, which amounts to $195 billion. The government has a mandatory 150% coverage ratio for these bad loans, which is extremely important to ensure the economy doesn’t blow up into ten thousand pieces of fortune cookie. Being that NPLs have soared by nearly 50% since last year, nothing could be more important to the health of the Chinese economy than to make sure its banks are well capitalized.

Right?

WRONG.

The banks have lobbyists over there too. They’ve managed to convince party bosses that lowering the coverage ratio to 120% is the best solution, aka a bailout.

What could go wrong?

Just remember, China has bottomed, Europe is picking up steam, Oil has bottomed.

This was one of the more powerful Cramer rants in quite some time. He discussed the driving force of this market, which is brutal and heartless job cuts.

It is the defined job of any CEO to manage expenses. Part of that job entails cutting the workforce in order to protect shareholder value. I understand some of you Bernie Sanders fuckheads believe GE is supposed to provide useless jobs for the benefit of lazy Americans. If that were the case, our corporate world would resemble our government controlled agencies and cities.

Would you like that?

No, of course not.

But if so many industries are culling their workforces, from tech to oil, where the hell are the new jobs coming from? Based on information provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the new jobs are coming from retail trade (Walmart, Target etc), Construction and Healthcare (quasi-government financed workers).

Here are the statistics.

Based on the data above, there have been job losses across the mining, oil & gas and manufacturing sectors, year over year. However, the oil and gas losses only amount to a mere 12%. Tomfoolery!

Most of the gains were found in bars and restaurants, as people shove stuffed shells into their fat faces and washed them down with craft swill.  Leisure and hospitality enjoyed big gains, as well as eduation and healthcare, construction, retail trade and finance.

The finance jobs will be gone soon, as every investment bank that I know is slashing expenses by firing people.

Everything else is easily explained by the dichotomy of classes which persists in this country, the have’s and the have nots. We are here to serve the aristocracy, provide them with leisure, build their castles, and beg their pardons at Disney World–while fetching their shoes at retail outlets.

The impressive jobs data is nothing less than a total farce, an illusion that is being used for propaganda purposes to sell the lie that the economy is great and everyone is working. People are working two, three jobs in order to meet monthly expenditures, hardly a sign of an economy on the cusp of breaking out.

Going forward, I’d find it incredible to believe those oil and gas jobs weren’t going to worsen, as well as deleterious drops in the financial and retail trade sectors.

During tonight’s mad money show, J. Cramer continued his bullish pageantry, discussing the virtues of this market–pertaining to a bottoming out in China, european markets getting a head of steam and the undeniable bottoming of crude oil.

I was especially taken by his ‘oil has bottomed’ thesis, pointing to the Schlumberger call, which spelled out an undeniable doom that persists in the market. They declared it to be in a ‘full cash crisis mode’ with production levels bound to decrease, as companies inevitably drop off like flies. My contention with this argument as being bullish for crude is the ramifications that will plague the market when these companies go bust. Plus, desperate people do desperate things. The dry bulk industry was supposed to bottom years ago. But it never did, because of the chicanery taking place by zombie tanker companies fucking with the spot market to attain cash flow.

I’d argue that the impending doom of an industry doesn’t make it investable BEFORE the doom hits. It’s better to wait for the carnage to hit, then pick up the pieces.

Apparently, the core thesis of many television market evangelists is that the 5 week stint of weakness that menaced the market in early 2016 was nothing more than a blip and that everything is good now, so you might as well buy it all up.

I’ll take the other side of this trade all day long.

Trump has destroyed the burgeoning Kasich presidential bid, by laying waste to his egregious table manners. How funny is this?

I can’t wait for him to mock Putin’s hunting etiquette.

The Kasich presidential candidacy has ended. God bless Donald J. Trump for enlightening the American people about the virtues of table etiquette.

This managing director, dubbed Stephen Gallagher, is straight up fodder in the investment banking world. He doesn’t really know what to say, in order to warrant his appearance. Therefore, he says something slightly ominous in order to draw the interest from the cocaine addled producers at CNBC.

Ahead of the Fed, the sages at Societe Generale are maybe expecting slightly more hawkish commentary, more than what the market is forecasting.

If pressed with what to say about the Fed on a CNBC teevee interview, I might suggest they “batten down the hatches because all holy hell is about to bust loose, centaurs and dragons will soon inhabit the earth, laying waste to catamite filled teevee networks, such as the one televising this interview right now.”

Rex Energy is holding a gun to the head of bondholders. The negotiations are going like this: convert the debt into equity or we’ll declare bankruptcy and you’ll be lucky to get 20 cents on the dollar.”

Now if they can renegotiate all of their debt into equity, that would give them a fighting chance to survive, providing crude prices could rebound. This could be a terrific turn around stock to get long, again contingent upon crude cooperating.

One minor thing to note: all of these extra shares can be extremely dilutive. I need to read the terms and see the strike prices. Nevertheless, the newly adorned stock holders are hoping to hit pay dirt with this exchange; otherwise, they’d never agree to the terms.

Via briefing.com

Co announces that it has closed two privately negotiated exchange transactions with certain holders of the company’s securities, including the 8.875% Senior Notes due 2020, the 6.250% Senior Notes due 2022, the Series A 6.00% Convertible Perpetual Preferred Stock, and the 1.00%/8.00% Senior Secured Second Lien Notes due 2020, in which those holders agreed to exchange their existing securities for shares of the company’s common stock

Rex Energy executed a privately negotiated exchange pursuant to which the holder exchanged $26.9 mln in aggregate principal amount of the 2020 Notes and 2022 Notes and waive all accrued and unpaid interest for approximately 5.2 mln shares of common stock. With this transaction, the company’s interest savings in 2016 and 2017 will be $1.8 mln and $2.1 mln, respectively. Total interest expense savings from the exchange will be approximately $11.6 mln

The company executed a second privately negotiated exchange with a different holder pursuant to which the holder agreed to exchange $13.8 mln in face value of the Preferred Stock and waive all accrued and unpaid dividends, and to exchange $2.2 mln in aggregate principal amount of the Second Lien Notes and waive all accrued and unpaid interest, for an combined total of approximately 1.9 mln shares of common stock. With this transaction, the company will save approximately $0.8 mln in dividend payments per year

Sex with REX comes to mind (no homo).

Strong markets like to go higher. The current state of the bear class is one of a disheveled, barbarous booze hound. These people have been broken to pieces, like stale pretzel sticks in the back pocket of someone riding a roller coaster.

Markets were barely off today, down by 24 on the Dow and just 3 SPY. Coming off a -150 early morning drubbing, I’d consider this to be a great success.

All eyes on Apple earnings now.

Party on like it’s 1929.

This is from a report penned on April the 22nd that is first being read now by the brain-sinks on Wall Street. Shares of the homewreckers are sharply lower on this ‘news.’

“This problem of rising bad debts continues to be a major issue in Macau, and is among the key drivers for the successive junket mergers and closures that we continue to see today.” Wynn and Melco hold the “riskiest slice of the industry’s junket business” because they have the most revenue among casino operators exposed to the high-stakes gambling segment, he wrote.

Personally, I’m a big fan of WYNN. It was the place we chose to host our first annual investors conference and it will always hold a sentimental place inside of my black heart. As for the morality of the casino business: absolutely horrid, almost as bad as offering legal counsel.

These companies had a great thing going in America, ripping off people in Vegas. But they had to get greedy and try to run their schemes in the totalitarian regime of China. WRONG move. Now they’re paying the price, in spades.

But alot of people already got very, very rich off the Macau scheme. I am sure these mountebanks will find a new place to hoodwink people and restore their glorious theft margins to new highs.

So let me get this straight, the CEO of PRGO, Joe Papa, is leaving PRGO in order to head up VRX. That makes sense, if you’re into lateral moves. But before Papa left PRGO, he blew it to smithereens.

In addition to announcing Mr. Potato Head was leaving the company, they also threw in an earning warning of the first magnitude.

PRGO Lowers FY16 EPS to $8.20-8.60 from $9.50-9.80 vs. $9.52 consensus. The majority of this change in guidance provided on February 18 is the result of a reduction in pricing expectations in our Rx segment due to industry and competitive pressures in the sector. The remainder of the reduction is primarily due to weaker-than-expected performance within the BCH segment for the next three quarters and lower expectations for consolidated new product launches.

The initial response to Mr. Potato Head joining VRX was one filled with elation. As the news sank in and people had a chance to mull it over, the stock began to give back its gains and are now lower for the day.

Meanwhile, shares of PRGO are getting poleaxed, off by 17% for the day.

Shares of PRGO are down more than 50% over the past year.