Past few days have been more difficult for Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX) than anyone who’s not directly involved in its operations can imagine. The downturn that started with Valeant delaying its earnings call ended with 18% intraday fall in its share prices, worst in last three years.
It happened when company’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Pearson, was on sick leave for a period of two months. As soon as he returned to work, he had to face a lot of criticism and concerns about company’s business practices and financial disclosures.
Insights of Matter
Pearson had a one-on-one discussion with selective Wall Street analysts on Tuesday. He stated that he was bullish about company’s performance all this time, but when things didn’t work out in the planned way in the recently concluded quarter, he decided to take a step backward.
One of the other issues that made it to highlights was the statement given by Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton in one of her campaigns. She said that she would go after Valeant to stop it from indulging in predatory pricing practices in its migraine drugs. Valeant has decided to challenge Ms. Clinton for this controversial TV ad.
When reporters reached out to Valeant, its spokesperson said that the patient showed in that advertisement campaign didn’t face any significant cost for the drug, so there was no question of anyone accusing Valeant’s drug development capabilities. Valeant refused to make any further comment about any individual.
The return of CEO Pearson boosted the confidence of shareholders and helped the company recover in share market on Tuesday. Going forward, he’ll look forward to getting Valeant out of this troublesome situation. Analysts who had a discussion with Pearson have assured that Valeant doesn’t have any major surprise (negative or positive) for shareholders, so don’t need to worry.
It will be great to see how Pearson molds his strategies to bring Valeant back on track.
