29 July 2016 - The mania surrounding Valeant Pharmaceuticals International hit its peak a year ago.

Strange as it may seem today after all that has happened, on Aug. 5, 2015 — two weeks after a dazzling second-quarter earnings report — the drug company’s stock closed at $262.52.

J. Michael Pearson, Valeant’s chairman and chief executive at the time, took a victory lap when he announced those earnings. “We once again exceeded our guidance and delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of greater than 15 percent organic growth,” he said.

Heady days. Since then, Mr. Pearson has been removed, the stock has lost over 90 percent of its value and the company that made its name buying drug companies and jacking up the prices of their products is under investigation by multiple arms of the law.

On 9 August, Valeant is scheduled to report this year’s second-quarter results. It is unclear, of course, what they will be.

But new financial data related to Valeant’s dubious pricing strategy provides some unsettling clues, both to the company’s future performance and how it generated past results.

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