UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Downgrades VIVUS Following Management Meetings

In a report published Wednesday, Piper Jaffray analyst Charles C. Duncan downgraded the rating on

from Overweight to Neutral, and lowered the price target from $14.00 to $11.00. In the report, Piper Jaffray noted, “We recently hosted Vivus management in meetings with investors and, although we remain positive on the evolution of the obesity drug marketplace and anticipate additional reimbursement and possibly broader commercial partner interest, we believe Vivus' execution will be more easily gauged in the rear view mirror, and the pace of change may further disappoint. Additionally, the company shared estimated 3Q prescriptions of 108,000 (vs. IMS's ~120k), and thus we are revising our estimates downward for 3Q, 4Q, and beyond. We note that Vivus is proactive with outreach to investors and recent patent notices of allowance and finalizing a U.S. partnership for Stendra are clear positives. That said, we anticipate the competition to become more onerous for Qsymia and lack visibility on commercial partnering, and based on these concerns as well as our model updates, we are decreasing our price target to $11 (from $14) and rating to Neutral (from Overweight).” VIVUS closed on Tuesday at $10.06.