UPDATE: Bank of America Raises PT on Orexigen Therapeutics from $7 to $9.

Bank of America maintains a Buy rating on Orexigen Therapeutics

and raises its price target from $7 to $9. Bank of America comments, “OREX announced that its cardiovascular outcomes trial, the Light Study, is enrolling faster than expected, with potential full enrollment by early-2013 and interim results (87 MACE events) potentially by mid-year 2013 versus a previously anticipated late-2013. We have increased confidence in a 2014 launch for Contrave and raised our probability of approval estimate by 10 percentage points to 75%, which could be conservative as the interim results only need to rule out a doubling of MACE risk in patients receiving Contrave, a low hurdle in our view. We raised our PO from $7 to $9. Note we include no value for OREX's follow-on obesity drug Empatic, which has been idled post ph. 2, pending the outcome of VVUS' Qnexa (Empatic has similar efficacy and safety issues as Qnexa).” Orexigen Therapeutics closed at $6.24 on Wednesday.