Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: PTLA)
Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (PTLA), a biopharmaceutical company gapped down yesterday on news of their oral treatment drug betrixaban not showing enough a statistical difference from the standard therapy in a phase 3 trial. The study compared betrixaban to the standard injectable enoxaparin and showed no statistical difference. Betrixaban is an anticoagulant used for the treatment of blood clots.
Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc. CEO Comments
“While we understand that the interpretation of these statistical and clinical results will be subject to discussions with regulatory agencies, we and the APEX Study academic leadership believe that the data in Cohort 1 were sufficiently strong to support a full assessment of Cohort 2 and the overall study population,” said Bill Lis, chief executive officer of Portola. “We believe the overall robustness of the efficacy and safety results in this high-risk patient population, including the positive net clinical benefit observed, provide ample evidence to support the submission of an NDA later this year.” Globe Newswire
PTLA Technical Analysis
PTLA gapped down in price yesterday to $21.04, down from the prior day’s close of $28.62, which is a 26% decrease in price. Taking a look at the daily chart we can see that the last time PTLA traded below this price level was on May 23rd, 2014 when it traded at $20.39. Taking a closer look down the daily chart we can see that PTLA has been on an overall decline dating back to September 18th when it traded at its 52 week high price of $57.96. PTLA has a float of 47.02 million shares and is trading 19 times the normal daily trading volume. For trading purposes, my entry point short would have been $21 looking for a run down to $20. My stop loss would have been $21.25, fearing anything above that and the stock would start to fill in the gap down.
Company Profile
Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, develops and commercializes therapeutics for patients in the areas of thrombosis, other hematologic disorders, and inflammation. The company is developing Betrixaban, an oral, once-daily Factor Xa inhibitor, which is in Phase III clinical trial for treating venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in acute medically ill patients in-hospital and post discharge; and Andexanet alfa, a recombinant protein that is designed to reverse the anticoagulant activity in patients treated with a Factor Xa inhibitor. The company is also developing Cerdulatinib, which is in Phase I/IIa proof-of-concept study, an orally available kinase inhibitor that inhibits spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) and janus kinases enzymes, which regulate signaling pathways, as well as for hematologic, or blood, cancers, and inflammatory disorders. In addition, it is involved in the development of PRT2607, a selective Syk inhibitor. Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has collaboration agreements with Bristol-Myers Squibb; Pfizer Inc.; Bayer Pharma, AG; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Daiichi Sankyo, Inc.; and Lees Pharmaceutical (HK) Ltd. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in South San Francisco, California. Yahoo Finance
