Bruker Shares Continue to Be Buoyed by Laukien’s 200,000 Share Purchase
The share price of Bruker BioScience improved 6 percent over a six-day coverage period for the BioCommerce Week Index, closing Monday at $33.92, continuing a gain ignited largely by the insider purchase of 200,000 Bruker shares by CEO Frank Laukien.
Over the last two weeks, Bruker’s share price has improved 25 percent and led nine companies among the 15 select molecular biology tools companies tracked in the index during the six-day tracking period ending Tuesday. The usual five-day period was lengthened because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US.
Beckman Coulter followed Bruker’s gain with a 3 percent improvement on the week, closing at $65.46 Tuesday, compared to $63.74 for the previous week. PerkinElmer shares were up 2.6 percent, closing at $21.33 Tuesday, compared to $20.80 last week. Sigma-Aldrich improved to $59.73 over the previous week’s $58.68, a 1.8-percent increase. Thermo closed at $30.25, up 1 percent over last week’s $29.91 price. Stratagene closed at $6.86, up almost 1 percent over last week’s $6.80, while Waters and Bio-Rad improved a fraction.
Harvard Bioscience was down 9 percent, closing at $3.96 from $4.34 a week ago to lead six BCW companies whose shares finished the week down. GE dropped 2 percent to $35.36 from last week’s $36.09, and Invitrogen fell 1.7 percent to $60.50 from $62.54. Other losers included Agilent, Molecular Devices, and Applied Biosystems.
While Agilent closed at $22.89, down from the previous week’s $23.08, the company share price has gained 14 percent since the BCW index debuted on Sept. 9.
Overall, the index finished at $34.04, an 8-percent improvement and a fifth consecutive week of gains.
For the week, the index outperformed the major market indexes. The Dow fell just under 1 percent for the five-day period while the S&P 500 fell a half percent and the Nasdaq index was up approximately one quarter percent. The Amex Biotech index was down a fraction of a percent while the Amex Pharma Index improved a quarter of a percent.
