Merrill Lynch raises Teva price target

Teva
Teva

"We believe the size/duration of the Copaxone franchise remains under-appreciated."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Sumant S. Kulkarni has raised his target price for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) to $62, with a "Buy" recommendation. This compares with a current price of NIS 200.90 on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, and a closing price of $53.21 on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. Teva has a market cap of $45.4 billion.

Kulkarni writes that he has updated his Teva model to reflect higher sales of Copaxone, as once a day generics which we previously modeled starting in the third quarter in the US, had not yet arrived. We now model fourth quarter generic entry and assume a more realistic switch rate of 55% in the fourth quarter and onwards to the 3x/week (vs. 50%; Teva's goal is to exit 2014 at 65%)…we are reiterating our Buy rating as we believe the size/duration of the Copaxone franchise remains under-appreciated. We also like management's sense of urgency on executing on its plans, which includes cost cuts, among other things. Our model excludes future unannounced deals," Kulkarni's note says.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch expects Teva to report revenue of $5,040 million for the third quarter, and earnings per share of $1.20, both below the analysts' consensus, and earnings per share of $4.90 in 2014 and $4.29 in 2015.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 23, 2014

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014

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