Kamada (NASDAQ:KMDA)

Kamada is kind of a weird company. Aside from being an Israeli biotech, which I've found to be a highly weird niche of the biopharma sector, the company offers a strange mix of marketed products and therapeutics in clinical development.The company's lead product, Glassia, is a plasma-purified alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) administered intravenously for congenital AAT deficiency. It may seem odd that Kamada's market capitalization is only 250M given the high valuation assigned to other companies marketing enzyme replacement therapies and other protein therapeutics for rare diseases, but Glassia is in fact the fourth plasma derived AAT to become available, and intravenous AAT doesn't seem to be the cornerstone of therapy for AAT deficiency.

Kamada IPO'd in early 2013 and seems to have dedicated the bulk of the cash they raised to their developmental pipeline, which mainly consists of a novel inhalational AAT as well as broadening the indications for Glassia. That effort took a serious body blow with the failure of a European phase II/III trial of inhaled AAT to meet the primary endpoint in May, resulting in a substantial haircut in share price from a high of 18 to a recent low of 7. Nevertheless, Kamada seems to be pressing ahead with new trials of inhaled AAT in emphysema from AAT deficiency. Trials of Glassia in GVHD and type I diabetes are also in progress.

Kamada's long-term prospects seem dubious but at some point the share price will level off and begin to rise again as traders become optimistic about trials in progress. I'm not sure that time has come, but I'll flag Kamada with a green thumb here to remind me to keep a close eye on the price movement as the pipeline progresses.