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Tickers in this article: GILD S AMGN ZNGA CELG

You have to like the action in a troika of senior biotech stocks -- Gilead(GILD) , Amgen(AMGN) and Celgene(CELG) -- because it shows you these forward-looking companies are still trying to grow and aren't just sitting there, facing patent cliffs and hoping to hold on before taking a real beating.

I like pharma. For companies such as Merck(MRK) , you are being paid to wait for new drugs to kick in as the yields are well above average. Other companies such as Abbott Labs(ABT) and Covidien(COV) -- two terrific companies -- are breaking into pieces to bring out value. Johnson & Johnson(JNJ) could easily adopt a breaking-up-is-easy-to-do strategy like Abbott and Covidien and create a gigantic spike for patient investors now that a new CEO is in place.

But what I like best about owning pharma is growth, pure growth based on new potential blockbuster drugs that can give you multiple years of growth. That's what Gilead, Amgen and Celgene are giving you and that explains these terrific gains.

Amgen's talking about some breakthrough products that can attack gastric tumors and ovarian cancer and anti-bad cholesterol statins that can work in cases where all others have failed. It doesn't hurt that the core businesses, including its older drugs like Epogen and Enbrel, were responsible for a delicious upside earnings surprise.

Gilead's got a terrific potential hepatitis C franchise that could be worth billions and billions of dollars starting in 2014. The company paid a fortune for Pharmasset, which has what many people believe is the best compound for hep C, and it didn't destroy earnings, In fact, they were much better than expected.

Celgene? What can I say? People prematurely wrote off this company when it had a problem with a European application for extended use of Revlimid, its breakthrough anti-multiple myeloma drug. But I am confident that the franchise remains intact and the number of initiatives this company has in the pipeline could lead to multiple years of earnings upside. Given the terrific profits just reported -- again, much better than expected -- Celgene remains an inexpensive stock with multiple years of growth ahead of it.