Spec Play: $BLUE
No, not Twitter, this is a different blue bird… Bluebird Bio ($BLUE) is a pharma company with gene-editing therapies: Zynteglo, Skysona, and Lyfgenia. The most important being Lyfgenia, a Sickle Cell Disease treatment which was recently approved in December.
The stock is really beaten down right now because their competitor, Vertex Pharmaceuticals ($VRTX), is attracting more patients (20) with their treatment, Casgevy, than they are (4).
Important Factors
• Lyfgenia comes with a warning of a higher risk of blood cancer whereasCasgevy does not.
• In the U.S., Casgevy costs $2.2 million and Lyfgenia costs $3.1 million.
Read more about it in this article.
[additional reading in the “Half-Assed Internet Research” section below].
TL;DR
Basically Bluebird’s CCO/COO reminded investors that Bluebird is limited to the U.S. only whereas Vertex’s numbers is for worldwide patients. Also, he expects the number of patients to increase in the second half of 2024 (between 85 and 105 patients).
“With Lyfgenia, there’s simply a longer path to patient starts. This includes going through the payer approval process but also the steps to clinical readiness within the patient community. It’s really just a timing thing,”
“Additionally, we are seeing patients scheduling many months in advance. They’re scheduling around life events. It’s not a slower start than expected and it’s not a demand issue. Demand is actually strong.”
- Tom Klima, chief commercial and operating officer
The Charts
On the Daily chart below, you’ll see $BLUE is up over 8% in just one day! Not only that it’s trading well below it’s 200 SMA and recently reached and all time low.
Now let’s look at the Weekly and Monthly charts…
The Weekly is not below 30 RSI but is still under the 200 SMA. This is also the lowest point it has ever hit.
On the Monthly, it’s just at 30 RSI and again at all all time low.
The good news is the upside could be huge. Emphasis on could. Since we’re in all time low territory we don’t know how much lower this could potentially go as we do not have previous data showing any sort of Support level. Also, the 8% gains we saw yesterday, which by the way is only a $0.055 price movement, could just as easily move in the other direction causing quick losses.
However, looking at both TipRanks’ forecast and Morningstar’s rating, there are others who see some potential in this position as well…
Also worth being aware of is that the majority of shares (57%) are owned by institutional investors (25 of who own a majority 47% stake) who recently have been selling off their shares:
If things go well and they can get more patients in the system this year then this could be a nice quick Swing Trade given its current price but it’s also super risky.
My plan is to see if it pulls back today/this week and try to get in at a lower entry point closer to the all time low.
Trade long and prosper!
🖖
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Half-Assed Internet Research
