Pharmaceutical filing citing a Hepatology Communications paper — Lipocine, 2020-09-14
LipocineLipocineNASDAQ LPCN
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in Hepatology Communications in a 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 manner in which it wrote the paper and the actual scope of the paper in sequence. It described where the stock price movement over the following month compared to past cases of the same type. This is a retrospective judgment written after knowing the results. The paper was read only up to the abstract.
The disclosure is written in the press release as follows
When a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders, it files a continuing report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, called 8-K. Lipocine filed this document on 2020-09-14, with item numbers 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in Hepatology Communications in the attached press release. If the sentence citing the paper is translated verbatim, it reads as follows:
The press release did not automatically identify the sentence citing the paper. Check the original link. Do not replace it with another paragraph.
What the reader first sees is where the company placed the paper within the press release. Next, the reader must 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, having read only the abstract, cannot provide that answer.
The scope of the paper discussed in the abstract is limited to this.
The paper's title is LPCN 1144 Resolves NAFLD in Hypogonadal Males and it was published in Hepatology Communications on 2020-08-02. The authors are affiliated with Virginia Commonwealth University · Lipocine (United States) · University of Chicago. The summary at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article read only up to that point. This paragraph was written by a person after filtering a machine-generated draft by numerical comparison; it is of a different quality than a full reading of the paper.
This is data from 36 participants in an open-label single-arm trial of a testosterone prodrug administered to men with low testosterone levels. At baseline, two out of three participants had liver fat levels exceeding the threshold for fatty liver. Most of them experienced reduced liver fat, and by week 16, nearly half had liver fat levels below the fatty liver threshold. No major adverse effects were reported. Since this is a small, non-controlled study, the paper cannot determine whether the improvement was due to the drug or natural recovery over time.
The abstract does not answer; the details remain in the main text and the appendix. This article, which does not go there, leaves the blank as it is. Readers compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the excerpt cited by the company.
A month later, the stock price was within the middle half of the sample.
The return remaining after subtracting the portion attributable to movement with the overall market is called excess return. Dates are recorded as trading days, counting only the days the stock market is open. In terms of the calendar, 20 trading days are approximately one month. The excess return for the day of the regulatory filing and the following month is presented in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Five trading days before the filing | −2.5% | Degree of movement before the filing |
| On the filing day | +7.8% | Filing day or the first trading day following |
| +1~+5 trading days cumulative | +28.1% | one week |
| +1~+20 trading days cumulative | +4.1% | 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 +4.1% in this case is within the bottom 73% of the 142 samples and is within the lower half.
| Sample scale (20 trading days) | Tenth from the bottom | Fourth from the bottom | Median | Top 25% | Top 10% | this case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| excess return | −31.9% | −20.1% | −7.4% | +5.5% | +19.5% | +4.1% |
Half of the sample falls between the two central marks in the table. One checks from the table whether this case falls inside or outside. The sample collects cases where U.S.-listed companies wrote papers in 8-K over the past ten years. The company itself is excluded from the sample. The numbers written here are past facts, not rules to apply to the next case.
There are three more cases where the same company wrote papers in 8-K, and they are placed together in the table below.
| Regulatory filing date | The journal of the published paper | Excess return for one month |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-08-03 | Hepatology Communications | −10.3% |
| 2020-09-21 | Hepatology Communications | −20.1% |
| 2021-03-04 | Journal of Endocrinological Investigation | +8.7% |
After the regulatory filing, the company issued such documents.
List only the item numbers of the three 8-K filings issued by the company after the regulatory filing date. 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 details of what occurred are read in the original text of each link.
- 2020-09-21 8-K Item 8.01, 9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
- 2020-09-21 8-K Item 8.01, 9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
- 2020-10-05 8-K Item 8.01, 9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
What this article does not answer
This article, which reads only the abstract, does not answer what method the paper used, what it reviewed, and how far it showed. How many times the paper cited by the company was cited afterward can be checked again through the OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website citation count. What will be seen next is whether the company's next 8-K again cites the same paper.
Glossary
- 8-K
- A voluntary 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 observe the movement of the company alone by removing the portion where the market as a whole rises or falls.
- Trading day
- A date counting only days when the stock market is open. Since weekends and holidays are excluded, 20 trading days correspond to approximately one calendar month.
- Sample and percentile
- A bundle of past cases of the same type is a sample, and the position counted from the bottom is expressed as a percentile. A percentile of 10 means that nine out of ten cases performed better than this case.
- Abstract
- An abstract is 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 methods.