Bank of America Maintains Neutral, $14 PT on Ariad Pharmaceuticals

Bank of America reiterates its Neutral rating and $14 price target on Ariad Pharmaceuticals

as ASH provided feedback on Ponatinib. BofA says, “Physicians have strong conviction that ponatinib is a very potent TKI, which is as safe and well tolerated as marketed second generation drugs from NVS (Tasigna) and BMY (Sprycel). Experts are confident the current study will support FDA approval, and expect PON long term will dominate the salvage CML market, which is consistent with our model. One important nuance is that the expected PON label would force patients to fail a second generation drug prior to use, which we believe limits the number of available patients per year eligible for PON relative to Street models.” ARIA closed at $11.63 per share on Friday.