Vertex stock falls as Leerink Swann reduces sales forecast for Telaprevir...

Posted on Business Week today. Leerink Swann analyst cut his sales forecast for Telaprevir by 35% and target share price from $66 to $48 based on the current hyper-aggressive development space  for interferon-free therapy. It was only a matter of time once Pharmasset launched their broadside at AASLD 2011. This is a ground-breaking product, but burdened with a sharply curtailed life cycle.

Vertex Falls as Analyst Cuts Hep C Sales Estimate: Boston Mover
January 30, 2012, 6:40 PM EST
By Drew Armstrong

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. fell the most in seven weeks after an analyst with Leerink Swann & Co. cut sales estimates for a hepatitis C pill made by the company that was approved by U.S. regulators last year.
Vertex’s Incivek, among the first new hepatitis C drugs to reach the market in almost a decade, may be eclipsed by new pill-only treatments with fewer side effects and shorter courses of treatment. Incivek is given with interferon, an injected medicine. Merck & Co.’s similar pill, Victrelis, was also approved last year.
Shares of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Vertex fell 3.5 percent to $34.74 at the close in New York, their biggest one- day drop since Dec. 8.
Howard Liang, an analyst with Leerink Swann in Boston, reduced his sales forecast for Incivek by 35 percent from $2.3 billion this year to $1.5 billion. Liang also cut his target price for Vertex shares from $66 to $48.
“In light of recent development of interferon-free regimens and likely more aggressive development as a result of recent transactions in the space, we are further curtailing the Incivek tail,” Liang said in a note to clients today.
Vertex had $420 million in revenue from Incivek in the third quarter of 2011. Revenue from the drug accounts for 64 percent of the company’s sales.
--Editors: Angela Zimm, Adriel Bettelheim
To contact the reporter on this story: Drew Armstrong in Washington at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net