Analyst Downgrades: Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., WPX Energy Inc, and Godaddy Inc

Analysts are weighing in on biopharmaceutical stock Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALXN), oil-and-gas stock WPX Energy Inc (NYSE:WPX), and domain marketplace Godaddy Inc (NYSE:GDDY). Here's a quick roundup of today's bearish brokerage notes on ALXN, WPX, and GDDY.

• ALXN is among the biotech stocks taking it on the chin today, down 11.5% at $137.11 -- on pace for its worst day in six years -- after its medication, Soliris, failed to meet goals during final-stage trials. Following the announcement, ALXN was hit with a slew of price-target cuts from no fewer than nine different brokerage firms, and the stock is now down 28% for the year. Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.'s Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.7 sits lower than 90% of all other readings from the past year, showing that near-term options players have rarely been more call-biased in the past 12 months. Analysts still haven't completely thrown ALXN to the wolves, either, as there isn't a single "sell" rating on the stock. An exodus of options bulls or additional negative analyst notes could exacerbate selling pressure on ALXN.


• WPX shares are trading at $10.75, down 1.7%, but earlier tagged a year-to-date high of $11.18. Wunderlich cut its price target to $12 from $13, even though the company yesterday raised its full-year oil production guidance by 5%, and announced that it would be offering 49.5 million shares of common stock for sale to provide additional revenue and funding. WPX Energy Inc is still up 88% year-to-date, and has outperformed the S&P 500 Index (SPX) by 71.4 percentage points over the last 60 sessions. As such, WPX sports a 14-day Relative Strength Index (RSI) of 70 -- on the cusp of "overbought" territory, suggesting today's breather may have been in the cards. However, not everyone has bought in; 15% of WPX's float is currently sold short, up 14.1% over the last reporting period.


• GDDY is down 3.2% at $31.91, after Citigroup cut its rating to "neutral" from "buy," just one day ahead of Godaddy Inc's annual shareholders meeting, and a week after Chief Marketing Officer Philip Bienert resigned. GDDY is now down 0.4% in 2016, and is facing familiar resistance in the overhead $33-$34 region. Wall Street seems skeptical, as the stock's 50-day put/call volume ratio at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX) of 6.2 sits higher than 88% of all other readings from the past 12 months, indicating a bigger-than-usual bearish bias among options traders. Short interest in the stock has risen 42% over the past two reporting periods, and 5.6% of the stock's float is currently short sold -- an amount that would take over a week of trading, at GDDY's average daily volume, to cover.