Sales Of This Eli Lilly Drug Could Nearly Double Wall St. Consensus In 2020, SunTrust Predicts

In a report published Wednesday, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst John T. Boris reiterated a Buy rating and price target of $95 on

. The analyst estimates that the US biologics psoriasis market would grow at a CAGR of almost 11 percent to $8.5 billion by 2020, from $5.2 billion in 2015. Globally, there are estimated to be 125M million patients suffering from psoriasis, with 7.5 million in the US alone. Of these, about 20-30 percent are classified with moderate to severe psoriasis. "We forecast the market share spilt between anti-TNFs & alternative biologics at ~52/48 percent by 2020E," Humphrey said. Data from three pivotal psoriasis studies for Ixekizumab show that the drug's efficacy is superior to biologics and placebo. Given that the BLA for the drug was submitted for approval in the US and EU in 1H15, the analyst expects US approval in early 2016, while expecting the company to file an sBLA in psoriatic arthritis in 2017. Given the high remission rates and response consistency on maintenance of Ixekizumab, the analyst expects strong uptake for the drug, compared to existing competitors. "LLY indicated that it is in the process of building out a small sales force to support the global launch of IXE to a "small community" of targeted specialists," the SunTrust report stated. The sales estimate for 2020 has been raised from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion.