Pharmaceutical filing citing The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation paper — Immunic, 2020-04-22
ImmunicImmunicNASDAQ IMUX
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation in its regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website as a basis for its claims. The company read the way it wrote the paper and the actual scope of the paper in order. It noted where the stock price movement over the following month compared to past cases of the same type. This is a hindsight judgment written after knowing the results. The paper was read only up to the abstract.
The disclosure wrote the paper in the press release like this
When a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders, the form it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission is called 8-K. Immunic filed this document on 2020-04-22, with item numbers 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation in the attached press release. The sentence citing the paper, copied verbatim from the original, is as follows.
Drugs in R&D , 19(4), 351–366. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40268-019-00286-z 18 Siddiqi H. and Mehra M., COVID-19 Illness in Native and Immunosuppressed States: A Clinical-Therapeutic Staging Proposal. Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. doi: 10.1016/j.healun.2020.03.012 Sun, P. et al.
What readers should first look at is where the company placed the paper in the press release. Next, they should determine whether the paper supports the company's entire claim or only part of it. To answer the latter question, one must read the full paper. This article, which only read the abstract, cannot provide an answer.
The scope of the paper discussed in the abstract ends here.
The paper's title is COVID-19 illness in native and immunosuppressed states: A clinical–therapeutic staging proposal and it was published in The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation on 2020-03-20. The authors are affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital · Harvard University. The summary at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article only read up to that point. This paragraph was written by a person after filtering a draft generated by a machine through numerical comparison, so it is of a different grade than a full-text reading and original judgment.
The abstract of this article is not publicly available, so it was not summarized. What can be known from the title is that it is a paper proposing treatment recommendations for stages of the progression of COVID-19 in people with normal and suppressed immunity. It is a proposal paper, not a clinical trial result.
What the abstract does not answer remains in the full text and appendices. This article leaves the blanks as they are. Readers should compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the part cited by the company.
A month later, the stock price was in the bottom quarter of the sample.
The return remaining after subtracting the portion that moves with the overall market is called excess return. The date is written as trading day, counting only the days when the stock market is open. In terms of a calendar, 20 trading days are about a month. The excess return on the day of this filing and for the following month are listed in the table below.
| Period | Excess return compared to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 5 trading days before the filing | +18.4% | The extent already moved before the filing |
| Day of the filing | +25.3% | Day of filing or the first following trading day |
| +1~+5 trading days cumulative | −6.3% | One week |
| +1~+20 trading days cumulative | −22.0% | One month |
A bundle of past cases of the same type is called a sample. The position counted from the bottom is expressed as a percentile. The one-month excess return of -22.0% in this case is within the bottom quarter, at the 21% position from the bottom among 142 samples.
| Sample scale (20 trading days) | Tenth from the bottom | Fourth from the bottom | Median | Upper 25% | Upper 10% | This case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excess return | −31.9% | −20.1% | −6.9% | +5.5% | +19.5% | −22.0% |
Half of the sample falls between the two middle marks in the table. Check the table to see whether this case falls inside or outside that range. The sample consists of cases where U.S.-listed companies cited papers in 8-K filings over the past ten years. The company itself is excluded from the sample. The numbers listed here are historical facts, not rules to apply to future cases.
Another case where the same company cited a paper in an 8-K filing is included in the sample and placed in the table below.
| Disclosure date | the journal of the paper | a month's excess return |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-07-12 | Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery | −19.6% |
after the filing, the company issued such documents
after the filing date, the company issued three 8-K filings. Only the item numbers are listed here. In 8-K filings without titles, the item numbers indicate the type of content. Whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract can be identified by the number. The specific event is read in the original text of each link.
- 2020-04-27 8-K Item 1.01,7.01,9.01 — Material contract execution · Reg FD disclosure · Financial statements · Exhibits
- 2020-05-08 8-K Item 2.02,9.01 — Earnings announcement · Financial statements · Exhibits
- 2020-05-13 8-K Item 8.01,9.01 — Other events · Financial statements · Exhibits
what this article did not answer
This article, which reads only abstracts, cannot answer what method the paper used, what it showed, and to what extent. How many times the paper cited by the company was cited afterward can be rechecked by the OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website citation count. The next thing to see is whether the company's next 8-K again cites the same paper.
Glossary
- 8-K
- A spontaneous report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission when a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders. It is categorized by item numbers such as earnings, contracts, and executive changes. All events in this article come from this document.
- Excess return
- The remainder after subtracting the overall market return from the stock return. It is used to see the movement unique to this company by removing the portion where the market as a whole rose or fell.
- Trading day
- A date counting only the days the stock market is open. Since weekends and holidays are excluded, 20 trading days are about a month in calendar terms.
- Sample and Percentile
- A bundle of past cases of the same type is a sample, and the position from the bottom within it is expressed as a percentile. A percentile of 10 means that nine out of ten cases performed better than this case.
- Abstract
- A summary placed at the beginning of a paper. The author writes in a few sentences what was done, how it was done, and what results were obtained. Without reading the full text, one cannot know the details or limitations of the method.