Intensity is Rising on ACA enrollment gains We expect 2Q14 health services demand growth (y/y, nominal) of 7.1%, the product of 5.5% growth in intensity and 1.5% growth in nominal…
Summary and Investment Conclusion On net, drug manufacturers are using co-pay cards to reduce the higher out-of-pocket (OOP) costs faced by beneficiaries on the health insurance exchanges (HIEs) as compared…
Premise and rationale Share prices of drug and biotech stocks arguably can be broken down into two major components: the capital markets’ estimates of the value of assets that are…
Returns on R&D Spending are Low v. Peers Merck’s economic returns to R&D spending (an enterprise-wide measure of R&D productivity that compares yr1 R&D spending to yr10 adjusted earnings)[i] exceeded…
Background and Rationale Drug, biotech, and research-based spec pharma stocks tend to outperform their peers in the periods preceding and following the anticipated approval of major new branded products. The…
As further context to widespread speculation regarding a potential PFE/AZN merger, we analyze trailing and current levels of R&D productivity at both firms, and also assess whether the theoretical NEWCO…
Weak Growth in Both Intensity and Pricing; Intensity is Slowly Improving but Pricing is Stagnant We expect 1Q14 health services demand growth (y/y, nominal) of 3.5%, the product of 2.5%…
We believe that growth prospects for the commercial HMOs (e.g. CI, AET, WLP, UNH) are substantially weaker than growth prospects for the Medicaid HMOs (e.g. MGLN, WCG, CNC, MOH), but…
7.5 million persons selecting a plan … On Thursday the Administration announced a revised enrollment estimate of 7.5 million persons for the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance exchanges (HIEs).…
Summary and Investment Conclusions First DataBank and Medi-Span are the dominant providers of point-of-sale pricing information to US pharmacies. In December First DataBank announced it would provide National Average Drug…