Monday, December 04, 2006

Cramer calls Pfizer a "$25 bond with no upside."

Jim Cramer just made his Pfizer comments on CNBC's "Stop Trading!" segment.

Cramer castigated Pfizer's management for what he called its "hype" of the torcetrapib cholesterol-regulating drug. Pfizer pulled development of the drug this weekend after study data showed users were dying more often than nonusers. Cramer questioned Pfizer's promotion of the drug, which he said the New York company likened to "the greatest thing since sliced bread."

"There are three things Pfizer is good at," Cramer said, calling the stock a "$25 bond with no upside." He said the three things are "issuing press releases, screaming at the media" and "blaming the system."

Luckily, "all three could come in handy" in the wake of the torcetrapib blowup, Cramer said, adding, "Pfizer, God love ya."

Funny how, what I've been saying for the past years, has now been picked up by one of the most popular market gurus. In fact, Jim Cramer has also started to echo my comments about former Pfizer CEO, Hank McKinnell. A few months ago he said "Hank constantly talked about how to fix health care. He always blamed the hospitals. In truth, he was instrumental in making it so the government spent more money on drugs than it had to, which left a lot less money for everything else. Meanwhile he, like Ray Gilmartin at Merck, turned his company into a giant marketing team with little innovation. "

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pharmas aren't unique in this situation. Many corporations across the spectrum moved the accountants up into the key positions and instead of designing and building things, they turned corporations into places where the only goal was to cut this and that. Nothing else.