Leonard Bell, M.D., CEO of Alexion Pharmaceuticals (ALXN, Financial), sold 60,000 shares in Alexion last Friday. At $165.12 a share, the transaction netted Bell $9,907,200.
Last month, Bell sold 105,000 shares of his Alexion stock.
As a group, stocks listed on the NASDAQ took a slight hit on Monday, Sept. 29, dropping 0.14%, but Alexion’s price went up 0.30% to $167.95.
Alexion, founded in Connecticut in 1992, was the pioneer developer and distributor of eculizumab (trade name Soliris), a drug that is used to treat rare blood disorders. GuruFocus rates Alexion’s financial strength 8/10 and its profitability and growth at 7/10.
“Our first commercial product is Soliris … the world's first and only approved terminal complement inhibitor,” Alexion’s website (http://alxn.com/) reports. “Today, Soliris is approved in nearly 50 countries as a treatment for patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), and in nearly 40 countries as a treatment for patients with atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS). Both PNH and aHUS are life-threatening, ultra-rare diseases that are caused by chronic uncontrolled complement activation.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Soliris for use in September 2011. The decision was called “the most important advance that has been made for patients and families with this disease.”
The company continues to be involved in research in the immune system and to learn how it can be kept from attacking healthy tissue.
Alexion has a market cap of $33.71 billion; its shares were traded with a P/E ratio of 84.0 and P/S ratio of 17.5. Alexion had an annual average earnings growth of 52.40% over the past five years.
Gurus who have purchased Alexion stock in recent months are Andreas Halvorsen (Trades, Portfolio), Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio) and Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio).
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