Biogen

It's a drug called Abinex.

It's an actual drug that was patented in 1997 by a biotech company called Biogen.

It's still around, but at that time it was a young company.

It's one of the drug, and it was a blockbuster drug potentially.

It was a drug to treat MS, big market.

And the reason I'm going to stick with this example is I got information on this example that I generally am not able to get.

What Biogen actually did was they did a traditional capital budgeting on whether they should develop the drug right away.

Have you ever seen pharmaceutical companies actually estimate cash flows for a drug? It's kind of scary.

First up, an upgrade.

We've raised our rating on biotech company Biogen, ticker B-I-I-B, to buy.

Given Biogen's fast-growing rare diseases portfolio, the addition of its specialized immunology portfolio, the potential of its Alzheimer's disease programs, and an attractive pipeline with multiple catalysts just around the corner, we believe a buy rating is now appropriate.

Next, a downgrade.

We've lowered our rating on Wendy's, ticker W-E-N, to sell from buy.

Problem with that is even though we get the data in 28, that drug hasn't demonstrated any single agent activity yet.

Biogen have a gene therapy which leverages the tau mechanism.

It didn't work in phase two, but they probably might be taking it into phase three anyway.

Major question marks there.

One of the ports in the storm, and it's been a storm.

I can tell you that in a biotech, you got Biogen, Amgen, which reports real soon.

Medical research and products and services, things like Thermo Electron, Waters Corp., Agilent, and some others.

So that area.

We've also seen some pretty significant wins in the life science industry.

Fujifilm, Diosynth Biotechnologies, Amgen, Biogen, Genentech.

There are so many more, and I know I'm forgetting them, but What's also really cool is on the business side of that, we have Gilead, their marketing and sales and communications and IT teams, kind of their finance and back office sit here in Raleigh.

So that was a really exciting.

On Wednesday's watch list, the earnings parade continues.

We get numbers from Airbus, Biogen, Boston Scientific, GSK, GE Healthcare, Google Parent, Alphabet, FedEx, Ford, Microsoft, and Chipotle.

I'm Jessica Ettinger, CNBC.

From gas prices to housing prices.

And something that I enjoy in every... cycle of the journey because I had cycles is then to find to get closer to attract people with whom you want to do this with whom you want to share this people from who you're going to learn and grow I know sometimes it sounds like cliche and truly finding people that are smarter than you in some aspect that you absolutely need to get things done in that complex equation to transform things from zero to one and people from different background, cultures, technical skills that could come with you and define or understand the big picture and the horizon, but being able to own and lift you up and lift the group up based on their own expertise and skills.

And that's something that I've deeply enjoyed and I'm probably going to put in number one if I have to put a list in every cycle that I just mentioned, like taking a role, whatever, with one role like in France and then the one in Cambridge and the one in Singapore, and then when I moved to Biogen and how we established Biogen Digital Health and my work here, that moment when you start identifying, recruiting people, building your team, finding your network of people you really want to remain close to, to get things done, to identify those synergies, that's definitely the best part of it.

With all the mistakes again, okay, sometimes you hire people and it's not what you think, but the big picture, the overall thinking here on having a vision, building an idea.

And the vision, it takes 30 seconds to say, okay, this is the vision.