Regulatory filing by diagnostic company citing a paper in Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology — Natera, 2021-11-04
NateraNateraNASDAQ NTRA
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 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 the paper demonstrated in sequence. It recorded 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 wrote the paper in the press release like this
When a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders, the report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission is called 8-K. The item number of the document filed by Natera on 2021-11-04 was 2.02 Earnings announcement · 9.01 Financial statements · Attached documents. The company cited a paper published in Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in the attached press release. The sentence citing the paper, copied verbatim from the original, is as follows.
Two can be better than one: Improving Non - invasive Diagnostics in Kidney Transplantation. CJASN 16: 1462 - 1463 , 2021; https://doi.org/10.2215/CJN.10630821 ”The limitations of the current study include the number of rejection samples and limited scope of the patient population .” - Akalin, et al.
What readers should look at first is where the company placed the paper in the press release. Next is to 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 read only the abstract, cannot provide an answer.
The scope of the paper discussed in the abstract is limited to this.
The paper's title is Two Can Be Better Than One and it was published in Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology on 2021-10-01. The authors are affiliated with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The summary published at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article read only up to there. This paragraph was rewritten by a person after filtering a draft written by a machine reading the abstract through numerical comparison, so it is of a different grade from a full-text reading and original judgment.
This article is not a research paper but an editorial in a nephrology journal. It addresses the issue that acute rejection still troubles patients and reduces the long-term survival of transplanted kidneys, despite improvements in transplant immunosuppression and post-transplant management. It cites the rejection rates recorded in studies over the past 20 years. The title suggests that using two tests together may be better than one. It is not an article containing new experimental results but a commentary on other studies.
The abstract does not answer; it remains in the main text and the appendix. This text, 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 excluding the portion attributable to movement with the overall market is called excess return. The date is recorded in 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 on the day of the regulatory filing and for the following month are presented in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 5 trading days before the filing | −5.8% | The extent to which it had already moved before the filing |
| regulatory filing day | −0.8% | filing day or first trading day thereafter |
| +1~+5 trading day cumulative | +1.7% | one week |
| +1~+20 trading day cumulative | −13.1% | 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 -13.1% in this case is within the bottom 39% of the 142 samples, placing it in 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% | −6.9% | +5.5% | +19.5% | −13.1% |
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 of that range. The sample consists of cases where U.S.-listed companies cited papers in 8-K filings over the past decade. The company itself is excluded from the sample. The numbers listed here are historical facts, not rules to apply to future cases.
The same company had four additional cases where papers were mentioned in 8-K filings, which are included in the table below.
| Filing date | The journal of the paper | Excess return in one month |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-11-08 | Transplantation | −12.1% |
| 2023-02-28 | Journal of Genetic Counseling | +18.2% |
| 2024-08-08 | Journal of Clinical Oncology | +3.9% |
| 2025-11-06 | New England Journal of Medicine | +18.7% |
After the filing, the company issued this document
Three 8-K filings issued by the company after the filing date are listed with only item numbers. In 8-K filings without titles, the item numbers indicate the type of content, so it is possible to determine whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract. The details of what occurred can be read in the original text of each link.
- 2022-04-15 8-K Item 5.02 — Change in Officers or Directors
- 2022-05-05 8-K Items 2.02,9.01 — Earnings announcement · Financial statements · Attached documents
- 2022-06-01 8-K Item 5.07 — Results of the Shareholders' Meeting
What this article has not answered
This article, which reads only the abstract, cannot answer what the paper reviewed, how it was done, or what it showed. The number of times the paper cited afterward can be checked again via 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.
Explanation of terms
- 8-K
- A voluntary report submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when a listed company has something to inform its shareholders. The type is indicated by item numbers such as earnings, contracts, and executive changes. All the 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 of this company alone by removing the portion where the market as a whole rose or fell.
- trading day
- a count of days when the stock market is open. weekends and holidays are excluded, so 20 trading days are about a calendar month.
- sample and percentile
- A bundle of past cases of the same type is a sample, and the position 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
- a summary at the beginning of a paper. the author writes in a few sentences what was done, how it was done, and what was found. without reading the full text, details and limitations of the method cannot be known.