St. Jude Medical (STJ) Receives Department Of Justice Attention

Jefferies & Company analysts Peter J. Bye, Joshua Jennings and Anthony Petrone maintained their Buy rating for shares of St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE: STJ), with a price target of $49 per share.

The analysts said that the Department of Justice had given St. Jude Medical, Inc. a "civil investigative demand" related to an investigation into reimbursement practices and a warning regarding the company's Epicor marketing.

The analysts said that St. Jude Medical, Inc. believes other competitors are receiving similar requests from the Department of Justice and that it reflects an industry-wide risk increase.

The Jefferies & Company analysts wrote, "STJ's official statement states that it believes that similar requests from the DOJ were made of other "major" competitors within the ICD industry. Assuming the investigation is industry-wide and relating to some form of price collusion among two or more major ICD players, we would expect additional DOJ requests to be issued in the coming days, if they have not been already followed by SEC disclosure filings by any other manufacturers targeted in the investigation. Analgous investigations suggest this will not be major, but, we acknowledge could boil to an orthopedic industry type investigation and thus place a further weight on overall investor sentiment towards the CRM market."