‘Not as dramatic as hell freezing over, but it’s close’

That’s how Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Raymond described Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ decision to spend $1 billion buying its own stock yesterday. Stock buybacks, like patent thickets and price increases, are pretty de rigueur in the drug industry, but not for Regeneron, which has spent the last three decades taking a self-fashioned pharmaceutical high road.

That hasn’t always endeared the company to the world of Wall Street, which is perhaps why Regeneron’s share price rose about 7% yesterday. Baird analyst Brian Skorney called the $1 billion endeavor a sign of “financial maturation,” adding that Regeneron’s “willingness to use excess cash to buy back shares, as opposed to wanton R&D spend, signals some willingness to demonstrate some financial restraint.”

Not that Regeneron is being forced to walk back its commitment to spending money on research, wanton or otherwise. Analysts didn’t exactly cheer when the company decided to develop what would become the sixth checkpoint inhibitor for cancer, but early data released yesterday suggest Regeneron’s treatment could wind up being more than competitive with Merck’s market-leading Keytruda when it comes to treating lung cancer.