What's In Store For Agios (AGIO) This Earnings Season?

Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AGIO) is scheduled to report first-quarter 2016 results on May 5, before the opening bell. Last quarter, the company had posted a negative surprise of 300%. Let’s see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors to Consider

Agios, a development-stage biopharmaceutical company, is focused on the development of treatments for cancer and rare genetic metabolic disorders. Currently, the company has several interesting candidates in its pipeline out of which the most advanced are AG-221 (IDH2 mutant inhibitor – phase III study on the candidate versus standard of care chemotherapy in relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia/AML patients presently in progress) and AG-120 (IDH1 mutant inhibitor – phase III study in frontline AML patients to be initiated in the second half of 2016).

At the end of the quarter, Agios announced the initiation of a phase I/II study on AG-221 or AG-120 in combination with Vidaza in patients with newly diagnosed AML with an IDH mutation who are not eligible for intensive chemotherapy. The company plans to initiate several frontline as well combination studies on these candidates during the course of the year.

Apart from these, Agios’ pipeline includes AG-881 (pan-IDH mutant inhibitor), which is currently in phase I dose escalation and expansion studies for hematological malignancies and solid tumors. Meanwhile, the company plans to present first data from the phase II DRIVE pyruvate kinase deficiency (PK) study on AG-348 for transfusion-independent patients with PK deficiency in the first half of 2016.

We note that Agios has a collaboration agreement with Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ:CELG) for AG-221, AG-120 and AG-881, which will continue to bring in collaboration revenues.

With no approved products in its portfolio, investor focus should remain on the company’s pipeline updates since a number of pipeline-related activities are lined up for 2016.

Surprise History

Agios’ performance so far has been disappointing with the company missing expectations in three of the last four reported quarters. Overall, the company has delivered an average negative miss of 74.70%.

What Our Model Indicates

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Agios is likely to beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. However, that is not the case here, as you will see below.

Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at a loss of 69 cents.

Zacks Rank: Agios currently carries a Zacks Rank #3, which when combined with an ESP of 0.00%, makes a surprise prediction difficult.

Note that we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Other Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are a couple of health care stocks that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they also have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ:JAZZ) has an Earnings ESP of +6.11% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is scheduled to release first-quarter results on May 10.

The Earnings ESP for Impax Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ:IPXL) is +8.89% and it carries a Zacks Rank #3. The company is scheduled to release first-quarter results on May 10.