Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of Halozyme Therapeutics (HALO -0.55%), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of human enzymes, gained as much as 24% after reporting its third-quarter earnings results.
So what: For the quarter, Halozyme reported a tripling in its revenue from the prior year to $16 million as its net loss shrank modestly to $19.3 million, or an adjusted EPS loss of $0.17, from $20 million in the year-ago period. By comparison, Wall Street had been expecting Halozyme to report just $14.6 million in revenue (a decisive beat), but also expected a narrower loss of just $0.15 per share. Halozyme's revenue soared on the heels of the European launch of Herceptin SC and HyQvia. The launches of these two drugs also resulted in milestone payments of $10 million and $4 million, respectively, which will be recognized in upcoming quarters.
Now what: The good news here is that Herceptin SC, a subcutaneous version of cancer drug Herceptin that can be delivered rapidly compared to the IV version, has a shot at being a real revenue growth driver for Halozyme moving forward. The downside is that it's probably going to be a few years before Halozyme is profitable based on product sales alone, which makes its current $1.5 billion market valuation potentially frothy. This is certainly a name that biotech-savvy investors would be smart to have on their watchlist, but at its current price I'm perfectly happy remaining on the sidelines.
