Innovent Biologics (HKG: 1801) shares are up 6% today. Which is nice, but finding out why they have risen is something of a problem for those of us outside the Great Firewall and restricted to information in English. Which is a pity - Innovent seems to be doing good work and as we can see the share price has at least at times interesting movements. But if we can’t gain access to the ebb and flow of market information we’re a bit limited in how we might trade.
As to what’s done at Innovent: “Innovent Biologics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, develops and commercializes monoclonal antibodies and other drug assets in the fields of oncology, ophthalmology, autoimmune, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in the People’s Republic of China. It offers Tyvyt, a human anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody; BYVASDA, a fully-human anti-VEGF monoclonal antibody; HALPRYZA, a recombinant chimeric murine/human anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody; SULINNO, a fully-human antiTNF-a monoclonal antibody; Pemazyre, a selective FGFR inhibitor;” and so on.
This is actually of strategic importance. For decades now the only major drug regulator that mattered was the FDA in the US. Gain authorisation there and make money, don’t and don’t. This is now no longer true. 1.3 billion Chinese have their own regulator and approval system, they’re rich enough (each individually poorer than Americans but in aggregate a large market) to be a viable market. But all this activity is now going on within the Mainland economy that we’ve no real vision into.
Innovent Biologics share price from Google Finance
Also worth noting that Innovent is up some 60% on the year to date.
As we say, there’s very little English language news out there about Innovent. In common with so many other Mainland oriented shares. There’s an approval of a treatment from a month back. The acceptance of an application from two months back for myeloma.
Our point here isn’t that Innovent is a bad company - it looks like it’s doing quite well in fact. It’s that we out here just don’t get the information flow to be able to trade the shares. We cannot, therefore, recommend trading them on those very grounds. Who knows why the share price is moving? That’s information in Mandarin, inside China. Something that we out here simply aren’t getting a look at.
Trading blind is not a good way to try to make money.