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

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...