Vivus has been dropping like a stone the past few weeks, and today the stock moved down even further when the company disclosed during it’s quarterly conference call that just 3504 patients are on Qsymia to date and that about 30 percent of prescriptions are abandoned due to cash outlay. With the stock down more than 50% since I initiated my short this seemed like a good moment to close my position.

While the result of my Vivus short has been favorable it’s still a bit too early to tell if the original thesis was correct. The dropping share price the past few weeks had nothing to do with potential patent issues, but everything with disappointing sale numbers and a decision from the EU to disallow Qsymia on the European market. This last point was certainly not part of the original short case, and it’s a bit too early to tell what’s exactly the cause of the disappointing sale numbers. If the short case was correct this should be because Qsymia is just a combination of two cheap generic drugs and that patients and/or doctors prefer this option. If the low number of sales are because the US population is for example not interested in an anti-obesity drugs I just got lucky.

Disclosure

No position in VVUS anymore