Why AbbVie Stock Sank in September
Shares of the Illinois-based AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) sank by an eye-catching 10.7% last month, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. That's equivalent to a $20 billion drop in market capitalization. What caused investors to hit the panic button on the drugmaker's stock last month? Early on in September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a wave of new warnings for a class of drugs known as JAK inhibitors.
The warning stemmed from a large safety-related study showing that patients taking Pfizer's JAK inhibitor medication Xeljanz, an arthritis drug, were at increased risk of heart attack, stroke, cancer, blood clots, and death. AbbVie's next-generation rheumatoid arthritis med, Rinvoq, received a similar warning from the FDA because it belongs to the same class of medications as Pfizer's drug. Investors apparently took this regulatory setback to mean that AbbVie's new growth product will ultimately be negatively impacted by this news.
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Source Fool.com
