Stock of Firm Making Potential AIDS Drug Plunges

Despite the cautiously upbeat test results for its potential AIDS drug, ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. common stock plunged amid heavy selling Friday by Wall Street speculators who were expecting even better news.

“The expectation was that the (announcement) by the company would be broader in scope and impact,” said Adele Haley, a drug analyst with the investment banking firm of Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co.

At a press conference in Washington Friday, ICN said its tests indicate that the drug may delay the onset of AIDS in people who harbor the AIDS virus.

In the selling frenzy that followed the announcement, ICN stock plunged $4 a share to close at $21.25. More than 3.3 million shares--or more than 20% of the company’s total outstanding stock--changed hands, making it the New York Stock Exchange’s third most-active issue.

No FDA Endorsement

Craig Dickson, an analyst with Interstate Securities Inc., a Charlotte, N.C., investment firm, also attributed the sell-off to investor disappointment that federal regulators did not issue a positive statement concerning Virazole, also known by the generic name of ribavirin.

“The expectation must have been that the announcement today would include a full and complete endorsement by the Food and Drug Administration,” he said. “The stock was bid up on speculation and sold off on the news today.”

An FDA spokesman said Friday that the agency “will continue to review” ICN’s data, but he declined to discuss the test results.

ICN, as well as its two publicly traded subsidiaries, Viratek and SPI Pharmaceuticals Inc., have run-up sharply on the stock market over the last year, largely because of investor speculation that Virazole may be an AIDS miracle drug. In 1986, ICN shares increased 31% in price while Viratek shot up 492% and SPI increased 138%.

Shares of other drug makers with potential AIDS remedies have also skyrocketed during the last year, including Genentech Inc. and Great Britain-based Wellcome Group, parent of Burroughs Wellcome Co., which manufactures another promising AIDS drug, azidothymidine, or AZT.

But, because of the wide speculative interest, ICN and its two subsidiaries have also been among Wall Street’s most volatile issues.

Last month, for example, ICN and Viratek shares plunged on a heavy one-day volume after a New York investment firm questioned ribavirin’s effectiveness in low doses, and investors learned that some clinical trials would continue into January, two months later than expected.

Analysts Remain Skeptical

Those trials, which involve patients with AIDS-Related Complex--those who display some symptoms of the deadly disease, but do not have full AIDS--will be completed next week, Milan Panic, ICN’s chairman, said in an interview Friday.

Some analysts are skeptical about ribavirin, which despite nearly 20 years of research, has so far only been approved for treating respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a sometimes-fatal infant disease.

Last year, the FDA took the unusual step of disciplining the company for making false and misleading claims in press kits distributed after ribavirin was approved for treating RSV.

In a letter to Panic, the agency objected to a company statement that the drug was “so free of side effects that it could be used in premature infants.” The FDA also said ICN “grossly exaggerated” the drug’s efficacy against ailments other than RSV. ICN was forced by the agency to send corrections to all the recipients of the original announcement.

“I think that ICN’s past record leads one to be skeptical more often than not,” remarked a drug analyst for a major Wall Street investment firm who asked that his name not be used.

Some analysts have suggested that in announcing partial test results Friday, ICN may be attempting to generate new publicity for Virazole on the eve of a FDA meeting to further consider the merits of AZT.

But Panic denied any connection between the timing of ICN’s announcement and the FDA meeting, saying that it merely would have been “immoral” not to reveal the results of the trials to the patients involved.