Bruker Insider Buy Bolsters 17-Percent Weekly Gain; Index Climbs
Bruker BioScience’s share price closed a shortened coverage period for the BioCommerce Week Index on Monday at $4.33, a 17-percent gain based largely on an insider purchase of 200,000 shares by CEO Frank Laukien last week.
Bruker’s gain offset share-price losses by seven of the 15 select molecular biology companies tracked in the index in the four-day period ending Monday. The usual five-day tracking period for the index was shortened due to early Thanksgiving holiday publishing deadlines.
Bio-Rad followed Bruker’s gain with a 5-percent improvement on the week, closing at $55.66, up from $53.68 last week as investors apparently responded to the as-yet unverified possibility of another US case of mad cow disease. (See story, page 1).
Other gainers on the week included Applied Biosystems, closing at $20.57, up 3 percent from last week’s $20.00 close; and Beckman Coulter, closing at $63.74, up 2 percent over last week’s $62.68. Sigma also closed up at $58.68, a 1-percent increase over last week’s $57.88, followed by Waters, closing at $46.41, up from $45.85 last week.
Agilent and BD each were up a fraction of a percent. Agilent closed at $23.08, up from $22.95. BD closed at $54.72, up from $54.53 last week.
PerkinElmer led the week’s losers with a 5 percent drop, closing Monday at $20.80, down from $21.80 last week. Stratagene dropped to $6.80 from last week’s $6.92, marking a third straight weekly loss for the La Jolla, Calif.-based reagent marketer. Invitrogen closed at $61.54, from from $61.88 last week.
Overall, the index closed at $33.92, up 1 percent over last week’s $33.57 close and marking a fourth consecutive week of gains.
For the week, the index outperformed all of the large indexes as the Nasdaq, S&P 500, and the Dow all fell a fraction of a percent. Meantime, the Amex Biotech index dropped just under 2 percent while the Amex Pharma Index dropped approximately 2.5 percent.
