Ladenburg Thalmann Maintains Buy, Raises Target to $8.50 on Opko Health

Ladenburg Thalmann reiterates its Buy rating on Opko Health, Inc.

and raises its target to $8.50 from $6 on economics from the Claros platform and the company's emerging orphan drug franchise. Ladenburg says, “In our view, adoption of POC testing outside the hospital has been hindered by high COGs and reliability issues associated with the need to recalibrate most POC products. Data generated from Claros' CE Mark filing for its lead product, a PSA test, suggest performance comparable to a reference lab (r of 0.98 compared to Centaur) while internal validation testing and the structure of Claros' relative value scoring suggest the platform does not require recalibration.” OPK closed at $4.96 per share on Wednesday.