Executives at Insys Therapeutics ($INSY) bribed doctors to juice sales, drove share prices up, and then got busted by investigative reporter Roddy Boyd, resulting in prison sentences for senior leaders at the dope merchant.
The next step could be bankruptcy court, the company revealed earlier this month.
The company said it might have to file for bankruptcy thanks to costs incurred by the US Department of Justice. And the timeline of Insys path from a $45-per-share stock to, potentially, $0 is matched by a steep decline in both hiring and employee headcount, according to our data.
Going to 0?
A pair of charts sum up Insys' future; the first is our data tracked via LinkedIn ($MSFT) Employee Count. Insys' staff size shrunk from a recent peak of 406 workers, in 2016 - about a year after Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation's report on Insys came out - to 267 in May of this year, a slide of 35%.
The hiring picture is far more bleak. The company was listing more than 60 positions as of summer 2016, today they are looking for just one worker, according to our data - a 98% decline. Perhaps Insys is "going to zero" in more ways than one.
But these opioid-slinging execs likely heading to prison are far from the only wrong-doers in corporate America.
A very similar company is on a different track: OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma ($PRIVATE:PURDUEPHARMA). The privately-held, Sackler-run opioid maker has been told by its former bank, JP Morgan Chase ($JPM) , to take its billing and deposits business elsewhere; some hedge fund managers won't even touch the dope-tainted cash of the Sackler family - the same goes for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the overwhelming majority of US states have lined up lawsuits against the company. Legal actions against the company totaled 1,600 as of March.
As elected officials pledge to take on big pharma and high medicine prices, there may be other drugmakers - potentially, far removed from the opioid industry - that face similar scrutiny and outcomes. Lawmakers should take clues from Roddy Boyd's work, and they can learn more here. If that happens, alternative data will likely provide insights into which company is falling next - and how fast it will go down.