Opioid Litigation Creates Investment Opportunity in the Pharmaceutical Sector

October 10, 2019

Patrick Trucchio, Research Analyst, Therapeutics, joined Berenberg Capital Markets LLC in September 2017 to cover smid therapeutics equities.

He previously worked at Wells Fargo covering specialty pharmaceuticals for two years, with prior experience covering personal care and household products at BMO Capital Markets for eight years. Mr. Trucchio holds a B.S. in finance from the Pennsylvania State University-University Park, an MBA from St. John’s University — Queens, is a CFA charterholder and NYSSA member.

In this wide ranging 4,703, Mr. Trucchio gives investors an exclusive interview on his hot stocks for the current market.

“I think what’s really interesting is, when you look at the split in our coverage, which includes 19 stocks across U.S. specialty pharma, U.S. biotech and EU biotech, there’s definitely been, over the last year, a separation between companies that are revenue generating versus those that are not.

In those that are revenue generating, what you’ve had is all this rhetoric around pharmaceutical pricing, and the payers, the insurance companies and the pharmacy benefit managers having to become more aggressive on making sure that they hold down inflation in drug prices.

For some of these stocks, they are down 30%, 40%, 50% or more, whereas the ones where they don’t yet generate revenues — it’s all based on clinical data readouts and potential for drugs to reach the market in three or five years in the future — these stocks have tended to perform better.

It’s a function of concern regarding health policies emerging from Washington…”

The theme of opioid litigation is deeply researched by Mr. Trucchio:

“So that brings us to where we are today, which is three tracks of litigation.

What’s different from the first wave versus the second wave is that the first wave was contained to Purdue primarily and a moderate dollar amount of liability — all things considered.

Today, there are three tracks of litigation, with state attorneys general that are suing; the federal multidistrict litigation, which is in Ohio, comprising more than 2,000 lawsuits and growing by the day, and includes cities and counties primarily; and the Department of Justice — DOJ — track.

The opioid litigation has been compared by some to the tobacco litigation of the 1990s. One of the key differences between this and tobacco was that the DOJ stayed out of it. The states divided up the global settlement.

There were three tobacco manufacturers that the states negotiated with, and they came to a $250 billion settlement that was paid out over several decades. However, with the second wave of the opioid situation, the DOJ very much wants a seat at the negotiating table.

Another key difference between the tobacco litigation is the lack of a true global settlement…”

Get the complete picture of where investors can find some upside in the sector, exclusively in the 4,703 word interview, only in the Wall Street Transcript.