BMO Downgrades Ionis Pharma After Platelet Concerns Spill Over To Volanesorsen

Shares of Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: IONS) lost 39.42 percent on Thursday after the company announced that GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE: GSK), which has the option to license the company’s IONIS-TTRx — currently undergoing a Phase 3 trial, has decided not to initiate a Stage 3 trial for CARDIO-TTR until there’re data from the NEURO-TTR and investigator-sponsored Phase II aTTR cardiomyopathy studies available.

Following said event, BMO Capital Markets analyst Do Kim decided to downgrade the stock from Outperform to Market Perform, while trimming the firm’s price target from $55 to $26, as the experts lower their sales projections for TTR-Rx on the back of “a potentially weaker competitive profile.” Also impacting on BMO’s decision was the expectation of a “lower probability of success to TTR-Rx and volanesorsen commercialization given increased regulatory risk.”

Related Link: Cowen Downgrades Ionis After Thrombocytopenia Issues

As per a research note issued Thursday, the analysts believe that the detection of thrombocytopenia cases in the Phase III volanesorsen studies further overshadows the underlying cause of platelet reduction.

While analysts at BMO anticipate the volanesorsen trials will increase their platelet monitoring and remain on schedule, they think “the uncertainty increases the risk for FDA intervention,” the report stated.

Upside risks to the firm’s Market Perform rating include a faster-than-expected approval of nusinersen in infants, a sooner-than-anticipated start to the CARDIO-TTR trial, and encouraging data from Ionis’ mid-stage pipeline – especially FXI-Rx, GCGR-Rx and DMPK-2.5Rx.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.