Medical testing company regulatory filing citing a Journal of Genetic Counseling paper — Natera, 2023-02-28
NateraNateraNASDAQ NTRA
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in the Journal of Genetic Counseling as a basis for its claims in a regulatory filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website. The company read the manner in which 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 2023-02-28 was 2.02 Earnings announcement · 9.01 Financial statements · Attached documents. The company cited a paper published in Journal of Genetic Counseling in the attached press release. If the sentence citing the paper is translated verbatim, it reads as follows.
“Expanded carrier screening for reproductive risk assessment: An evidence - based practice guideline from the National Society of Genetic Counselors.” Journal of genetic counseling, 10.1002/jgc4.1676. 9 Feb. 2023, doi:10.1002/jgc4.1676 Not for reproduction or further distribution.
What readers should look at first is where the company placed the paper in the press release. Next, they should determine whether the paper supports the entire company claim or only a 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 mentioned in the abstract is limited to this extent.
The paper title is Expanded carrier screening for reproductive risk assessment: An evidence‐based practice guideline from the National Society of Genetic Counselors and it was published in Journal of Genetic Counseling on 2023-02-09. The authors' affiliations are Johns Hopkins University · Johns Hopkins Medicine · Salem University · Baylor College of Medicine. The summary published at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article only read 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 document is not a paper but a clinical guideline issued by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. It discusses a test that screens for multiple recessive genetic disorders in healthy individuals to inform the possibility of the child inheriting the disease. It also includes a proposal to rename the test to be fairer than the old method, which selected tests by tracing ancestry. It issued recommendations with assigned evidence grades, and what is recommended to whom is in the main text.
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.
One month later, the stock price was in the top quarter of the sample.
The portion of returns not explained by market-wide movements is called excess return. Dates are recorded as trading days, counting only the days the stock market is open. In calendar terms, 20 trading days amount to roughly one month. The excess return for the day of the regulatory filing and the following month are presented in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 5 trading days before the filing | −2.2% | The extent to which the stock had already moved before the filing |
| regulatory filing day | +1.8% | filing day or first trading day thereafter |
| +1~+5 trading day cumulative | +19.0% | one week |
| +1~+20 trading day cumulative | +18.2% | 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 +18.2% in this case is in the top quarter, corresponding to the 89% position from the bottom among 142 samples.
| 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% | +18.2% |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-11-04 | Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology | −13.1% |
| 2022-11-08 | Transplantation | −12.1% |
| 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 based on the number. The details of what occurred can be read in the original text of each link.
- 2023-03-13 8-K Item 7.01 — Reg FD disclosure
- 2023-04-21 8-K Items 5.02,9.01 — Executive and director changes · Financial statements · Attached documents
- 2023-05-09 8-K Item 2.02, 9.01 — Earnings Announcement · Financial Statements · Attached Documents
What this article does not answer
This article, which reads only abstracts, cannot answer what the paper reviewed, how it was done, or what it showed. How many times the paper cited by the company was 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 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 the 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.