Onyx’s Transformative Year: From Productive Partner To Big Cap Contender?

Onyx Pharmaceuticals is working to execute on two launches and produce late-stage data that will enable it to add more indications to its growing roster of marketed drugs. If it succeeds, it could eventually rival competitor Celgene as one of the few biotechs to move from a small cap into the big cap ranks, but any stumbles could slow or eliminate Onyx’s evolution.

Getting past execution risk is only one step on the road to becoming a sustainable independent big cap. As a company becomes profitable, investors expect it to bring in another substantial revenue-generating candidate. In 2013, execution is the name of the game for Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. It’s marketing its first wholly owned product, Kyprolis (carfilzomib), a treatment for refractory multiple myeloma (MM) patients, on its own in the US and major European countries. That’s a tallorder for a mid-cap biotech, but expectations are high, and if it succeeds, the company could become one of a handful of biotechs that evolve from R&D houses into fully integrated biopharmaceutical companies.

Already the company has made significant progress toward that goal; its market cap doubled to $5 billion in 2012. That’s because investors started to believe that the biotech is more...

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