Ebb & Flow

Investors looking for evidence of the differing fundamentals between biotech and pharma needn't look much farther than the basket of earnings put out by each group last week. Not that one quarter's numbers tell the entire story, but it's another point for the argument that biotech is where the growth is.

Eight of the nine profitable biotech companies reporting beat the Street, and one met the consensus estimate (see "BT Earnings vs. Rx Earnings," A18). The only biotech that didn't top the Street was Invitrogen (IVGN), which competes in the beaten down supplier space...