Yahoo Finance Market report: PureTech offers timely medicine to investors with Roche tie-up
Healthcare innovator PureTech Health proved just the medicine for investors rattled by Donald Trump’s trade war chest-beating after inking a “game-changing” deal with Swiss pharma giant Roche.
PureTech will collaborate with Roche on technology that will use milk to administer medicine.
The company will harness the firepower of the £150bn mammoth to develop the medicines in a deal that could be worth $1bn (£760m), it claimed.
It will use exosomes in milk to target hard-to-treat diseases. Exosomes are resilient to humans’ digestion system and attaching medicine to them could help them survive when they would otherwise be destroyed in the stomach.
The medicine is “potentially game-changing” and Roche’s commitment of up to $1bn for the development phase alone “signals strong validation for PureTech’s platform”, Peel Hunt analyst Amy Walker told clients. She added that the deal will bring developments in its separate Ariya division to the fore.
PureTech surged as much as 14pc before investor excitement fizzled slightly, closing on a 4p, or 2.9pc, gain at 140p.
Elsewhere, consumer goods giant Unilever edged higher after completing the first tranche of a €6bn (£5.4bn) share buyback programme to quell investor discontent.
As it struggles to lift growth, the Dove and Lynx maker has sold its spreads business to private equity giant KKR in a €6.8bn deal and is using the funds to sink into buybacks, boosting its shares 31p to £43.62.
EasyJetflew 27p lower to £16.15 after boss Johan Lundgren reiterated his interest in part of collapsed Italian airline Alitalia.
Potash miner Sirius Minerals jumped 0.3p to 33.7p after bagging two long-term supply agreements with Chinese customers.
Nostrum Oil & Gas rallied away from all-time lows after Panmure Gordon upgraded the Kazakhstan-based minnow to “buy” on valuation grounds, lifting it 10p to 188p. Rival Premier Oil slipped back 3p to 120.6p on an Investec downgrade to “hold”.
Struggling high street stalwart Debenhams snapped a four-day slide to climb 0.8p to 12.8pc but still finished the week 13pc down.
Markets were rattled by Mr Trump taking aim at the Federal Reserve and accusing the EU and China of currency manipulation.
Resilient investors pushed stocks away from their lowest levels with Wall Street breaking back into positive territory and the FTSE 100 clawing back to just a 5.18-point loss at 7,678.79.
However, the DAX in Frankfurt struggled to recover, weighed down by its carmakers thought to be next in the cross hairs of the US president. It eventually closed 1pc lower.
Meanwhile, on currency markets, “king dollar” lost its crown as the US president’s latest Twitter outburst halted its recent rally.
Sterling, which slipped to a 10-month low against the greenback earlier this week on Brexit woes and weak economic indicators, surged 1pc to rebound back above $1.31, ending a three-day losing streak.
