CautiousInvestor

China: Latest Hotspot for Western Biotech, Pharma Firms

There are a number of interesting twists on the broad story.
China is already busy manufacturing generics but there are records of infringements and poor quality control.

Longer-term, though, China is likley to be a key manufacturer of generics which are likley to play an important role in the expansion of US healthcare services, while controlling costs; it's only logical the companies the author mentions take advantage of these opportunity.

The other slant is the health delivery system within China, which is in its infancy but is about to be expanded. Few details have been released, but the Central Party recently announced that by 2020 a system will be in place to provide equitable and cost-effective to health care coverage to the entire population of 1.3 billion.

In my mind, this development offers a very interesting investment theme.

Possible Swine Flu Profit Trades

I have pasted below material taken from Clusterstock and would add to the list 3M, who makes the masks that will likley be used if this thing reaches pandemic proportions.

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The swine flu outbreak has come during a horribly vulnerable time for the global economy, but at least on Monday, toxic balance sheets won't be the #1 news story.

Instead we'll be trying to figure out if this is the big one, or if it's just a prelude.

Two of the ones to watch tomorrow: Biocryst (BCRX) and Novavax (NVAX), vaccine makers which were up 26% and 75% respectively on Friday as news emerged of the disease striking in Mexico. We'll be shocked if they don't go crazy again on Monday, now that the story's gotten much bigger and because Novavax still has a market cap of under $100 million. It won't take much to make it go crazy.

Other companies that may profit from swine flu include Roche -- who's Tamiflu has had some effect and Gilead (GILD), which gets royalties from its sale.

This blog offers up some more speculative names including NanoViricides (NNVC) and Sinovac Biotech (SVA)

A stock we'd expect to see selling in: Hormel (HRL).

Any other ideas and guesses as to how the story will effect the markets and individual stocks? We'd love to hear 'em.