Piper Jaffray Maintains Overweight, $56 Target on Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Piper Jaffray reiterates its Overweight rating and price target of $56 per share on Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated

based on strong 2012 INCIVEK sales and profit and upside from the Cystic Fibrosis programs. Piper comments, “INCIVEK is off to a record launch achieving reported net sales of $495 million to date. We remain comfortable with our 4Q:11 forecast of $580 million totaling $1.1 billion this year. Looking at 2012, we forecast relatively flat quarterly sales of $531 million in 1Q:11, $554 million in 2Q:11, $531 million in 3Q:11 and $598 million in 4Q:11 totaling $2.2 billion next year. The docs we've spoken with do not expect new warehousing until 2013 giving us comfort in this forecast. Importantly, these strong sales result in robust profitability of $1.17 billion non-GAAP in 2012 with limited taxes of $116 million (10%).” VRTX closed at $29.25 per share on Friday.