Jim Cramer’s Recent Thoughts on These 8 Stocks

4. Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 62

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently shared thoughts on. Cramer said that the company needs to “broaden the portfolio,” as he remarked:

“Look, I think Amgen needs to do something because they’ve gotta broaden the portfolio where they need to be able to tell a little bit better story about some of the things that, they have a lot of good medicines, and they had a really good quarter last night.”

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) manufactures human therapeutics for cancer, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and bone disorders. Its main products include Enbrel, Prolia, Repatha, Otezla, and Kyprolis. Cramer mentioned the company during the June 25 episode and said:

“Unlike Mounjaro or Ozempic, which needed to be injected once a week, Amgen’s MariTide is one shot per month. I prefer monthly over weekly when it comes to injections any day… So what did we learn when Amgen presented on Monday afternoon? First, the market didn’t like it. The stock sold off. Hard response… There… [was] some genuinely new information too. I’m talking about the Phase 1 trial, data from the separate trial, studying much lower starting doses of MariTide with different escalation schedules, far less vomiting at the low doses…

This is really important because it seems to go down easier when patients start at a lower dose and then ratchet up gradually. So what exactly does this mean for Amgen, the stock? Again, Wall Street was not impressed. When Amgen published this data on Monday afternoon, the stock dropped an incredible 15 points in just a few minutes, finishing the day down almost 6%. But over the past two days, the stock’s recovered a big chunk of the ground that was lost, so maybe there’s something good here…

My bigger concern, we may not see MariTide get FDA approval and make it to the market until late 2027 at best… Amgen’s very confident that their Phase 3 trial will be successful by the time 2027 comes along. Millions of people will probably be taking that Lily weight loss pill. That said, the stock… sold off to the point where I would not bet against it…

I don’t think that new MariTide data is bad enough to justify this decline. And now you’re getting a bargain. That’s right, Amgen’s at a bargain, basement price of 13 times earnings…. And while Lilly’s a great stock that certainly deserves a premium… I think Amgen’s gotten too cheap by comparison.

This is still a big biotech company with mid-single-digit earnings growth expected this year, not to mention potential upside for this GLP-1 drug down the road. But here’s the bottom line: We got plenty of data from this American Diabetes Association conference that ended earlier this week, and I think Amgen’s trial results were misunderstood. The stock did not deserve to get hit this hard. Lily’s still my favorite way to play the GLP-1 story. But if you’re looking for a bargain, you could do a lot worse than Amgen.”