The accompanying table includes statistics and all 23 companies in the ETF Innovators (ETFI) Global Health Innovators Index of companies with market caps over $250M which received FDA approval in the past 12 months for an original new drug product or medical device.
The index includes companies which get approvals for drugs or biological agents classified as new chemical entities (i.e. excluding all new formulations of existing drugs, generic drugs, and label extensions for existing products). Also, companies which receive original PMA approvals for new medical devices are included in the index, excluding the less rigorous and more numerous 510(k) applications.
The goal of the index is to track the performance of companies which are developing innovative new drugs and medical devices to see whether their investment in R&D pays off in the form of better stock price performance compared to benchmark ETFs for pharma, biotech, medical devices, and the overall healthcare sector.
The Health Innovators Index fared better than the overall market and all five benchmark ETFs over the past year while posting a loss of 3.3% on an equal-weight basis, compared to losses of 20.9% for the Healthcare SPDR (XLV), 10.6% for the iShares Nasdaq Biotech (IBB), 18% for the Pharma HOLDRs (PPH), 8.5% for the PowerShares Dynamic Pharma (PJP), 36.8% for the iShares Medical Devices (IHI), and 34.3% for the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY).
Stocks in the index which managed to post gains over the past year despite unprecedented market turmoil include Thoratec (THOR) (+79.3%), ViroPharma (VPHM) (+66.6%), Amgen (AMGN) (+31.7%), Eisai (ESALY) (+10.9%) (acquired MGI Pharma), Cephalon (CEPH) (+8.7%), CV Therapeutics (CVTX) (+3.7%), and Watson Pharma (WPI) (+0.8%).
