Lingo Failure Leads Citi To Downgrade Biogen

Biogen Inc BIIB announced that anti-Lingo failed both the primary and the secondary endpoints in its Phase 2 RRMS trial.

Citi’s Robyn Karnauskas downgraded the rating on the company from Buy to Neutral, while lowering the price target from $345 to $295.

Lingo Failure

“While hitting on endpoints was always going to be tough in this small trial, we were looking for common sense separation of curves and dose dependent benefit. However, those data were not provided,” Karnauskas mentioned.

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The analyst believes that Biogen needs to do more work to understand the RRMS dataset and plan for the future.

Karnauskas also believes that this failure could lead to additional concerns regarding growth.

Stock Likely To Be Pressured

Karnauskas expects the company to report a beat and raised quarter for 2Q16.

However, the analyst cautioned that the stock was likely to see incremental pressure due to the rising need to undertake M&A activity, as well as competitive pressure from the potential launch of Ocrelizumab in MS.

The stock is also likely to be pressured by the spinoff of Biogen’s growing hemophilia business.

In addition, the analyst expects competitive pressure for the company from SMA gene therapies.