Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) garnered two upgrades and one downgrade from analysts this week, creating a roller-coaster effect in stock prices for the medical device giant.
The company’s stock has been closing at higher and higher values all week, but slid nearly 4 percent in midday trading Friday after an analyst at wealth management service UBS downgraded the stock from buy to neutral.
Wall Street analyst Rajeev Jashnani said the stock isn’t likely to trade higher until BSX can report sustained revenue.
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MassDevice Staff Website The Massachusetts Medical Devices Journal is the online journal of the medical devices industry in the Commonwealth and New England, providing day-to-day coverage of the devices that save lives, the people behind them, and the burgeoning trends and developments within the industry.
“We believe Boston Scientific could still remain range-bound until sustainable revenue growth improves, perhaps not occurring until `13-’14,” he wrote.
Jashnani added that growth in drug-eluting stents is healthy, but prices could drop hard thanks to competition between companies offering similar types of devices.
Moody’s bumped the Natick, Mass.-based company’s rating from stable to positive just yesterday, citing austerity measures under CEO J. Raymond Elliott and the recent news that one of the company’s main competitors in the stent market, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Cordis Corp., is dropping the business by the end of the year.
An analyst at Stifel Nicolaus similarly bumped the company from hold to buy on Wednesday.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Massachusetts Medical Devices Journal is the online journal of the medical devices industry in the Commonwealth and New England, providing day-to-day coverage of the devices that save lives, the people behind them, and the burgeoning trends and developments within the industry.
