inVentiv Health (NASDAQ:VTIV), a Motley Fool Hidden Gems pick, released a glowing press release on Friday about how it had or was in the process of signing nine new contracts to hock different drug companies' products, but its stock crashed almost 11% on a day when the rest of the market seemed euphoric.
What's up with that?
It looks like investors caught the negative statement stashed in the fourth paragraph. InVentiv lost the contract to sell Boehringer Ingelheim's blood pressure medication, Micardis.
By one estimate, the contract was worth only $30 million to $35 million of inVentiv's $1 billion in revenue last year. That alone doesn't justify such a large drop in its stock price. Most likely, scared investors are worried that the loss of the Boehringer contract is foretelling the loss of contracts from other pharmaceutical partners like Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), and Abbott Labs (NYSE:ABT).
It's true that pharmaceutical companies have been cutting back on staff, but ironically that's not necessarily to inVentive's disadvantage. Outsourcing to inVentive gives pharmaceutical companies flexibility to expand and contract as necessary. In fact, Merck (NYSE:MRK) has just signed up with inVentive after having cut its sales staff by 15% four months ago. Like research and development outsourcing counterparts Covance (NYSE:CVD) and WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE:WX), inVentive could actually benefit from pharma's streamlining.
All is not perfect for inVentiv, however. The slowdown in Food and Drug Administration approvals puts a drain on its ability to get new clients, especially for its communications (primarily marketing) division. Naturally, pharmaceutical companies that get complete response letters and have to go back to the drawing board aren't in the position to be spending money on marketing.
Still, the huge drop Friday seems a bit extreme. The market overreacts some times. Smart investors take advantage of it.
