UCB: Oddo raises target price

(CercleFinance.com) - An analyst at Oddo BHF this morning said that he is raising his target price for the share of Belgian biopharmaceutical group UCB, to 78 euros (vs.
76 euros), after an expert committee at the FDA approved Evenity in the treatment of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women, suggesting its future marketing as a drug.

Given the outcome of the expert committee, we can consider that the FDA is following this recommendation, and expectations are set to increase significantly... This recommendation is clearly good news for the company's longer-term strategy, which now includes a new growth asset, during the period when it loses its patent on Vimpat (2022) and Neupro (2021). However, we include the launch costs for the next two years, which lead us to trim our EPS estimates by 1% in 2019, followed by -5% in 2020. We are now including Evenity in our valuation model for UCB, with sales of 400 million euros, to which we attribute a probability of 75%, pending regulatory approvals, Oddo BHF notes.

As the new target price (78 euros) does not offer any upside potential relative to the share's current price, Oddo BHF has therefore downgraded the stock from "buy" to "neutral".



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