Amicus Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: FOLD) is going to be a top stock to watch Monday morning. This one lost 24.7% of its value down to $6.40 on Friday evening after the close and traded some 59,900 shares in the after-hours session. The Phase II results in its Plicera(TM) type 1 Gaucher disease treatment showed that clinically meaningful improvements in key measures of this disease were seen in only 1 of 18 patients who completed the study, while 1 additional subject discontinued treatment because of an adverse event. Needless to say, the data is very far short of what the company was hoping for and Amicus does not expect to advance Plicera into Phase III studies. The company is of course changing its 2009 guidance and, based on its current projections of net operating expense, Amicus now expects to end 2009 with approximately $70 to $80 million in cash.
For a reference on this, Amicus has a 52-week trading range of $6.26 to $15.26 and trades only about 35,000 shares per day. Its market cap before the 24.7% drop was listed as $192.4 million. It is impossible to know on Sunday morning if the stock will break those 52-week lows or not, but there were trades that went out under $6.00 and some even under $5.00 in the after-hours session before the stock settled in. We do not count the after-hours sessions in measuring 52-week highs and lows, but by some counts this one has already busted through its 52-week lows.
We do not see any stock options available in this name, although the stock has performed atrociously over the last two weeks. Its most recent short interest was also listed as over 1.4 million shares or about 61 days to cover, so this will be very active on Monday despite and average volume this low.
JON C. OGG
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