The announcement of the failure of a joint trial of a growth hormone deficiency treatment with Pfizer sent Opko plunging in New York on Friday.
The start of trading in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's first session of 2017 was delayed this morning after orders indicated a fall of more than 2.5%. The cause was the plunge in the share price of Opko Health, which fell by 19% in New York on Friday and fell by a similar margin in Tel Aviv this morning.
US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer announced at the end of last week that a joint trial of an experimental drug, hGH-CTP, for growth hormone deficiency (GHD) in adults had failed to provide a statistically significant benefit over a placebo. Opko's weighting in the Tel Aviv 25 Index is almost 8%, which means that it is depressing the index, which is currently down 0.53% despite strong rises by Teva, Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim, and Bezeq.
Other major arbitrage stocks opened on positive gaps. Teva and Mylan both had 0.8% gaps. On the other hand, Cellcom opened with a negative gap of 1.7%, Partner with a negative gap of 2.3%, and Tower Semiconductor with a negative gap of 0.7%.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 1, 2017
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2017
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Photo: Eli Yizhar