Raymond James analyst Steven Seedhouse reiterated an Outperform rating on Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) but perceives the STAT News article as hearsay despite the 19% move in GILD shares. Key points in the article include:

• 2 of 125 patients (including 113 "severe" patients) enrolled in the studies at UCM died (1.6%).
• “Most” patients were discharged within 6 days.
• Rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms were reported, and “we have seen people come off ventilators a day after starting [remdesivir] therapy”.
• Data for the first 400 patients in the study will be locked on Thursday.

The analyst stated "STAT muddles context and doesn't offer much actual data, presumably because they don't have it (how much followup? What does "severe" mean? Quantitation of comments like "most" and "we have seen people") so we are left trying to pick up the pieces and figure out why GILD is up 19%. Bottom line, even if we take the purported investigator comments at face value, they appear 100% congruent with the prior NEJM compassionate use cohort (N=53), which implied a potential modest-to-no benefit over historical comps".

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Shares of Gilead Sciences closed at $84.45 yesterday.