Two of my favorites biotech companies, as well as two of my larger covered holdings, reported second quarter results last week: Exelixis (EXEL) and Dynavax Technologies (DVAX) .
Exelixis easily beat both top and bottom-line expectations. My 2023 "stock pick of the year" is now up 25% year to date and I still see more upside. My only frustration to this point of the year is the company has not put any of its over $2 billion cash hoard to use and made some strategic acquisitions yet.
My other holding, Dynavax Technologies, however, had a more impressive quarter. Expectations were for Dynavax to report a loss of roughly 10 cents a share for the quarter. Instead, the company posted a slight profit. Management did a masterful job building the company's now huge cash holdings by supplying adjuvants for use with several Covid vaccines overseas. That revenue stream is now largely curtailed, but the company now has just over $680 million of net cash on its balance sheet as of the end of the second quarter.
This has allowed the company to establish its hepatitis B vaccine franchise with Heplisav-B, which is rapidly becoming the standard of care in this growing market. Heplisav-B saw $56.4 million worth of revenue in the quarter, a 73% increase from the same period a year ago. The vaccine's market share also grew to 39% in the quarter from 32% in the second quarter of 2022. I expect Heplisav-B to eventually account for approximately three quarters of the overall hepatitis B vaccine market. It provides more effective protection than Entergis-B, the previous standard of care. As importantly, Dynavax's vaccine has much higher compliance as it can administered with two doses over a month rather than three doses over six months like Entergis-B.
Dynavax is making some progress advancing some early-stage vaccine candidates using the same technology platform behind Heplisav-B. But the company will be dependent on Heplisav-B sales for the foreseeable future, although I would not rule out management from making an accretive acquisition, and Dynavax Technologies would itself be an attractive buyout target itself. The company's blow out sales this quarter enabled leadership to boldly lift full year sales guidance. It's new revenue range for fiscal 2023 is $200 million to $215 million, up significantly from its previous range of $165 million to $185 million.
Not surprisingly, a couple of analyst firms reissued Buy ratings on DVAX after its blowout second quarter reports with price targets in the mid-$20s. With the stock selling at just under $15 currently, there still is room for significant upside as the company becomes more and more free cash flow positive. I added to my exposure to DVAX with the following covered call strategy this week.
Option Strategy:
Here is how I added to my DVAX holdings Friday using a covered call strategy. Selecting the January $15 call strikes, fashion a covered call order with a net debit in the $12.80 to $13.00 a share range (net stock price - option premium). This strategy provides downside protection of just over 10%. This strategy also has just north of 15% potential upside even if the stock moves up just a little over the option duration.
