RAC was one of the last biotechs to really rollover during the...

RAC was one of the last biotechs to really rollover during the recent market turmoil but unfortunately it looks like that's also translating into it being one of the slowest to enjoy the recovery that many Biotech stocks are currently seeing. RAC is unfortunately underperforming most of the top 15 ASX Biotech stocks over the last year as follows:

• second worst performer over the last month (down 19%), with 12 of the top 15 ASX biotech stocks showing gains of 3% to 50% in the last month.
• sixth worst performer over the last 3 months (down 3%), with 9 of the top 15 ASX biotech stocks showing gains of between 0.57% and 109% in the last 3 months.
• fourth worst performer over the last 6 months (down 33%), with 5 of the top 15 ASX biotech stocks showing gains of between 8% and 40% over the last 6 months.
• eighth worst performer over the last 12 months (down 39%). Only one of the top 15 ASX biotechs is in positive territory over this timeframe - TLX at +28%.

In this context, most of our recent gains could just be put down to "going with the flow", meaning that the recent heart protection update and initiation of the buy-back don't actually appear to have been received positively by the market at all. I imagine this is most frustrating for management to see (not to mention holders). Today's performance was particularly disappointing in light of the almost 4% gain in the XBI overnight. Are we all missing something here or does the market continue to have it wrong? Hopefully it's the latter!

Most of us here appear to be rusted on, but in the absence of a blockbuster announcement we may need to grit our teeth for a while longer if biotech investors decide to rotate funds out of the laggards and into the better performing stocks.

On the positive side, taking the timeframe out to 3 years, RAC is still the clear leader at a 2961% gain (IMU is the next best at 1009%), but that will be cold comfort to more recent investors at present.