ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARIA)
ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ARIA), an oncology company on Friday announced that its board of directors appointed Paris Panayiotopoulos as its new President and CEO. Panayiotopoulos will start his new position on January 1, 2016. He is replacing ARIAD’s founder and former chairman and CEO Harvey J. Berger.
ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. CEO Comments
Panayiotopoulos stated:
“I am very pleased to be joining ARIAD at this exciting time. Together with our passionate and highly capable employees, I fully expect that we will maximize the company’s commercial potential and further strengthen its pipeline. This will grow ARIAD’s importance as a highly specialized oncology company and build long-term value for our shareholders.” Business Wire
Chairman of CEO search committee comments:
Alexander Denner, Ph.D., the chairman of the CEO search committee, stated, “We are excited to welcome Paris as our new CEO. The search committee conducted an extremely thorough process, and we are very pleased with this outcome. Paris’ track record of global and turnaround success, both strategically and operationally, is just what the company needs at this time.” Business Wire
ARIA Technical Analysis
ARIA gapped down in price on Friday to $5.80, down from the prior day’s close of $6.23, which is a 7% decrease on news of a newly appointed CEO. Taking a look at the daily chart, we can see the last time ARIA traded below this price level was on December 14th, when it traded at $5.78. Taking a further look down the daily chart we can see that there was huge spike up in ARIA at the end August. ARIA was trading at lows of $5.80 on August 24 and four days later hit highs of $10.07, a 74% increase in price. That spike up was attributed to rumors of Baxalta buying out Ariad. After Ariad rejected the buyout plan the stock gave back all of that move up. In my opinion, with all the speculators who bought just for the buyout rumors cleared out in the selloff, and the news of a newly appointed CEO I would be bullish on the stock moving forward. ARIA does have a float of 170.10 million shares and was trading 1.5 times the normal daily trading volume. ARIA did open at the pre market lows. For trading purposes, my entry point would have been $5.90 looking for a run through $6.00. My stop loss would have been $5.80, fearing anything below that and the stock would continue the move down.
Company Profile
ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an oncology company, engages in the discovery, development, and commercialization of medicines for cancer patients. The company offers Iclusig (ponatinib), a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) for the treatment of adult patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), and Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia in the United States, Europe, and other territories. It also develops Brigatinib, an investigational inhibitor of anaplastic lymphoma kinase for the treatment of various patients with a form of non-small cell lung cancer; and AP32788, an orally active TKI for treating non-small cell lung cancer and various other solid tumors. The company sells and markets Iclusig through specialty pharmacies and specialty distributors in the United States. It has license agreements with Medinol Ltd. and ICON Medical Corp. to develop and commercialize stents and other medical devices to deliver ridaforolimus. ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yahoo Finance
