[Update: 1:55 pm Eastern, 11/20/09] After a bitter standoff earlier this year with billionaire investor Carl Icahn over alleged mismanagement, Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec now faces another sharp attack from a major shareholder.
New York-based HealthCor Management, a hedge fund that invests in health and biotech companies, said today in a regulatory filing that Biogen (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]) overpays CEO James Mullen, that his performance has been poor, and that the company has a record of “excessive and fruitless” spending on R&D and little regard for its shareholders. HealthCor portfolio managers Joseph Healey and Arthur Cohen, in a letter dated November 18, urged the board to “revisit” Mullen’s compensation, cut research spending, and start buying back shares to boost the stock price. HealthCor said it holds 3.65 million shares, or about a 1.3 percent stake in Biogen, and it has held a position for more than a year.
HealthCor is urging the board to turn things around by buying back $500 million to $1 billion worth of stock annually. That would reduce the supply of available shares, and increase the value of those that remain on the market.
“We fear that continued acquiescence to the status quo will be viewed as an indictment of the Board’s lack of focus on shareholder value creation,” HealthCor wrote in a letter to the board, which was disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
[Update with company response, 1:55 pm Eastern, 11/20/09.] Biogen Idec “actively engages with our shareholders and we appreciate their input,” says company spokeswoman Jennifer Neiman. That said, she also noted that Biogen has already done share repurchases worth $5 billion since 2004, and last month its board authorized an additional $1 billion of share repurchases.
HealthCor said in its letter that it has been arguing for changes at Biogen for more than a year. The fund noted that the company’s stock has seen no real growth for six years, and is currently trading near levels seen before the company filed for FDA approval of natalizumab (Tysabri) in 2004. (The stock was selling for $44.26 per share on February 17, 2004, and was at $46.05 at the time HealthCor wrote its most recent letter on November 18, 2009.)
While “investors have been left holding the bag,” in HealthCor’s words, the firm
