Healthcare company Pfizer (PFE) has been working frantically on new potentially winning cures since the COVID-19 vaccine’s impact started to dwindle. And it may be one step closer to a new such win, thanks to a treatment for hemophilia A that was successful in a large late-stage trial. But investors weren’t exactly on board, sending shares up fractionally in Wednesday afternoon’s trading despite the growing potential for the treatment’s approval.
Hemophilia A is a rare genetic disorder that impacts how blood clots, which can make even the slightest injury that much more potentially dangerous. But Pfizer seems to be making hemophilia, in general, its number one enemy right now, having already released Beqvez, a treatment for hemophilia B that got approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) back in April.
The new treatment, an experimental gene therapy, will serve as a one-time treatment that attempts to rewrite genetics to remove the disease in question or, at the very least, minimize its impact to the extent possible. That makes the costs of each treatment high since it’s only done once instead of repeatedly over a long time, but insurers are fairly likely to work with Pfizer on this one.
Not Everyone’s So Sure
Despite how good the news looks here, there are some distressing signs all the same. Treatments did produce results, certainly; reduced bleeds over the 15 month trial is nothing to scoff at. But that may not be enough to justify the likely high-end price tag that a gene therapy would command. Some are already questioning whether Pfizer’s new treatment will work well enough to get doctors to prescribe it.
Is Pfizer a Buy or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on PFE stock based on seven Buys and eight Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 15.41% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PFE price target of $33.83 per share implies 13.91% upside potential.
