Boston, MA 11/05/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The shares of Ariad Pharmaceuticals (NASDQ:ARIA), a global oncology focused company have been among the worst performing shares of the Wall Street. From a trading range of $16 to $18 just a month back, shares of company are currently trading at $2.4 apiece. And to make matters worse, the prices corrected another 43% a week back, which was gain followed by a cut of more than 5.4%. And company has announced its intention of going forward with a rights plan in order to save its assets. This is generally referred to as a poison pill in corporate terms and is used to waive off any takeover attempts. With the stock down almost 86% and available at market capitalization equal to cash on its balance sheet, it is ripe for hostile takeovers.
So what is it this time that has hit the stock hard? The main news behind these cuts remains to be suspension of sale of company’s blood cancer treatment drug named Iclusig. The drug has a substantial stake in company’s overall revenue pie as it is the only drug which company has the permission to sell. Company’s management still feels that all is not lost and have announced that there is a possibility that FDA might ask Ariad to conduct some new variants of the trials. They are also known to be in negotiations with the FDA to take back its ban on drug sale. The drug had been approved for treatment of two types of cancers, namely chronic myeloid leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. And due to promising results during early trials, the drug Iclusig had received an accelerated approval to go on sale with immediate effect. But since it was preliminary approval, it required that further studies had to be conducted to prove the accurate effectiveness of the drug.
