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Good morning,

Delaware doesn’t have many publicly traded companies and news on the stock front is a reason for concern.

As noted above, Incyte Corp. saw a nearly $3 billion drop in its stock market value after a failed late-stage trial that used a promising drug in its pipeline and Merck’s Keytruda for the treatment of a type of late-stage skin cancer.

Pulling the plug on the study so quickly also called into question the effectiveness of drug combinations as a magic bullet in cancer treatment. That development  rattled the entire industry on a choppy day on Wall Street 

Shares of Incyte have dropped by half since a spike in price in March of last year as investors look for signs that its pipeline will produce another blockbuster drug.  Its best seller is blood cancer drug Jakfafi.

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Incyte has quietly filled part of the void left by the departures of R&D jobs at AstraZeneca and before that the selloff of DuPont’s pharmaceutical businesses.

Riverfront Wilmington-based Navient saw an activist shareholder firm buy more than seven percent of its stock with the apparent goal of seeking a board seat and having an active role in bringing changes at the student loan servicing company.

Navient has faced headwinds since its spin-off from Christiana-based Sallie Mae.

The company has fiercely defended its collection and servicing practices on student loans. However, a hands-off stance by the Trump administration on the regulatory front has not yet aided the company, which has diversified into areas such as processing  parking meter services

The Navient share price remains off a 2015 high of $22 a share, finishing Friday at $13.44.

Both companies will be watched closely. Over the years, Delaware has lost publicly traded companies like Hercules, Wilmington Trust and Columbia gas that brought six-figure management jobs to the economy.

It was an activist shareholder Nelson Peltz who led to the loss of 1,700 jobs at DuPont and a merger with Dow.

Delaware will end up with two new publicly traded companies in the next 14 months or so. Corteva, the combined DowDuPont agriculture operation, and the specialty products businesses of DowDuPont will operate under the DuPont name and oval logo.

Here’s hoping for a fast start to the week. The newsletter returns tomorrow. – Doug Rainey, publisher

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