Acadia Pharmaceuticals stumbles on Q3 earnings miss
Investors are punishing shares of Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: ACAD) after the biopharmaceutical company following Monday’s close reported a wider-than-anticipated third-quarter loss as a result of higher R&D costs for initiation of its Phase 3 trials.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, the small cap reported a net loss of $16 million, or $0.43 per share, wider than the $0.38 per share loss 13 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecasted. The current quarter’s net loss was also wider than the net loss of $11.3 million, or $0.38 per share, recorded in the third quarter of 2006.
Revenues were $2 million, compared with $1.9 million for the third quarter last year.
Brean Murray & Carret analyst Jonathan Aschoff, who downgraded Acadia to “sell” from “hold” today, said he’s skeptical of whether an improved safety profile for the company’s drug pimavanserin in the Phase 2b schizophrenia co-therapy trial is correct. Pimavanserin is the company’s drug candidate for the treatment of Parkinson's disease psychosis.
“We expect that we will begin to see the previously reported robustness fade with full data set to be presented next month at the American Society of Neuropsychopharmacology conference,” Aschoff wrote in a research note today. “We also do not expect a partnership any time in the near future.”
Acadia began partnerships talks this past summer for pimavanserin co-therapy in schizophrenia, but according to Aschoff, still remains tight-lipped regarding the progress of these talks
Aschoff further noted that, “in [his] view, the Phase 2b trial demonstrated that pimavanserin would not prove superior to risperidone, and that pimavanserin is not differentiated enough from a side effect perspective to warrant a noninferiority trial.”
Acadia currently has five mid-to-late stage clinical programs as well as a portfolio of preclinical and discovery assets directed at diseases with large unmet medical needs, including schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease psychosis, sleep maintenance insomnia and neuropathic pain.
Shares of Acadia (ACAD) slipped 14.8%, or $2.22, to $12.78 at 12:30 p.m. ET. Shares of Acadia have been trading in the range of $ for the past 52 weeks.
