One of my favorite parts of doing research for HX Research is looking for the backstory of different companies.

Researching this week's recommendation reminded me of one of my favorite words we learned in the past few years: "zymotechnology," also known as "zymurgy" – the process of industrial fermentation used to create beer.

This is something humankind has used for thousands of years, eventually expanding into other areas like processing animal feed and industrial chemicals.

Zymurgy is also man's first real success at harnessing biological agents to create new materials.

This is how zymurgy (and beer making) has led to one of the most significant industries in human history: biotechnology.

Today’s HX Income recommendation is an opportunity to produce some income from one of the pioneers of this industry.

Here is the idea…

The company is biotechnology pioneer and giant Amgen Inc. (Nasdaq: AMGN).

The company was initially established in Thousand Oaks, CA, as "Applied Molecular Genetics."  Backed by a small group of venture capitalists, its early focus was on recombinant DNA technology and human insulin.

It is likely the most famous and successful biotechnology company of all time.

Amgen came public in 1983, and since then, the stock is up an astounding 59,000%, or a compound annual return of 19%.

Their success has continued in recent years, and you can see this in their continued earnings growth. Here is a table showing their earnings per share or "EPS" results for the last decade…

The company has grown EPS by +150% over this period and also managed to post positive growth every year.

Along with consistent growth, they have a solid track record of beating analysts’ expectations for EPS. This is a key to driving stock prices higher.

Here is a table showing their performance versus those expectations over the last five years…

They have missed earnings only two quarters in the last half-decade. Notably, they performed very well in this last report at the end of October.

When a company beats almost every quarter for five years, that company will also see earnings estimates move higher.

Over the last three years, AMGN has seen a mixed track record as some older products face new competition. Over the last year, though, their numbers have stabilized and enabled the stock to move higher.

Here is the chart of analysts’ estimates for 2025 EPS along with the stock price…

The chart shows that numbers stabilized earlier this year, and the stock began to move higher. In fact, it hit a new high just a few months ago.

This builds on the long and successful history of the stock price. We mentioned the incredible performance since the company came public, and here is the chart over the last decade…

The stock has more than doubled, and with its healthy 3%+ dividend yield, its performance compares nicely to that of the S&P 500.

Recently, though, the stock got hit hard. You can see that at the end of the chart.

Here is a shorter-term stock price chart along with our favorite technical indicator – the relative strength index or "RSI" over the last couple of years…

The recent sell-off in the stock pushed the stock down so quickly that it triggered our RSI “Buy” signal of trading below the 30 level and back above it.

Considering the company recently beat numbers, why did the stock sell-off so much?

Much of the recent excitement about AMGN had been about its GLP-1 weight loss drug called MariTide. This would be a competitor to the incredibly successful products from Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) and Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE: NVO).

The opportunity for the AMGN drug is that it would be the first monthly treatment for type 2 diabetes, a significant advantage versus both LLY and NVO.

The stock sold off on some Phase II data for the drug that demonstrated a few characteristics that disappointed investors.

We will not go into full detail here, but we reached out to some of our best contacts who have covered biotechnology for decades. Every one of them was comfortable with the data and ascribed the disappointment to the typical "noise" around this phase of the trials.

We have seen this situation with big drug companies and drugs many times. The stock trades up on excitement about the data and then trades off on noisy data. As long as the data doesn't change materially, though, it works out positively the vast majority of the time.

We looked at other times when AMGN stock has been this oversold. Here is a table showing how it has performed over the last decade when it trades below an RSI of 30 and back above…

While the stock is flat initially, over a few months, it recovers almost 80% of the time. We are over 20 days since the RSI "Buy" signal was triggered for AMGN, so we are getting right into the sweet spot.

We think this is a good income opportunity with the most successful biotechnology company of all time. Let’s cash in on the legacy of “zymurgy”!