Asia Times: Takeda Chemical shares surge with FDA nod to drug



	April 28, 1999	atimes.com

Japan Economy

Takeda Chemical shares surge with FDA nod to drug
Bloomberg News

Tokyo - Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd.'s shares surged as much as 5.4 percent after a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel said Japan's largest drugmaker's Actos diabetes pill appears safe for treating Type 2 diabetes.

Shares in Takeda rose as much as 280 yen to 5,450. Some 708,000 shares changed hands in morning trading, about half the daily average the past three months. Shares closed morning trading at 5,430, up 260 yen.

Actos could help make Takeda a powerful international company in the next century, as Actos could achieve $1 billion in annual sales in the U.S., analysts said.

''Actos could be a huge drug,'' said Alex Zisson, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist. ''It could be the platform for Takeda to become a player in the U.S., so there is also a strategic value."

If approved by the FDA, Actos would likely vie with SmithKline Beecham Plc's Avandia - unanimously approved Thursday by the same panel - for a market that Warner Lambert Co.'s Rezulin now dominates.

''I think it's a great class of drugs,'' said Leonard Yaffe, a NationsBanc Montgomery Securities analyst. ''Actos will become the leader and Avandia will be second."

Panel members said they believed the drugs are safer alternatives to Warner-Lambert's Rezulin - which has been tied to liver damage and even deaths in rare cases. Still, they recommended that patients taking Actos and Avandia should have periodic liver checks as the FDA now requires with Rezulin patients.

''When you dodge a bullet once, you become more sensitized,'' said Jaime Davidson, of Endocrine and Diabetes Associates, who was a consumer representative on the panel. ''Once bitten twice shy.'"

Takeda is likely to post a sixth-straight record group profit for the current year to March 2000 on growing sales of its new drugs, the Nihon Keizai newspapers reported Saturday.

Net profit will probably rise 20 percent from the previous year to 106 billion yen ($890 million) on sales of 920 billion yen, up 8 percent, making it the first Japanese drug company to post a group net profit of more than 100 billion yen, the paper said.

A company spokesman declined to comment on the article, calling it speculation. But analysts agree with the report.

Takeda's revenue in the U.S. is already growing due to sales of its ulcer treatment Prevacid, sold by TAP Holdings Inc., a joint venture with Abbott Laboratories. In Japan, the company is expected to begin selling in June its anti- hypertension drug Blopress and the cholesterol-busting Certa, co-developed with Bayer.

Takeda on April 1 applied to the European Medicines Evaluation Agency for approval to market Actos in the EU's 15- member countries. In December 1996 it applied to Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare for permission to begin selling the drug at home.

Some 13.7 million Japanese are suspected to be suffering from diabetes, including Type 2 diabetes, the health ministry said last week.

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