Shire has been fairly buoyant recently, with a raft of positive broker comment in the wake of last month's announcement it would buy Viropharma, a specialist in rare diseases, for $4.2bn.
But its shares are currently 57p or 1% lower at £27.15p after a negative note from UBS. The bank has moved its recommendation from buy to neutral and cut its price target from £31 to £30.60. It said:
Shire has diversified its pipeline and appears ideally positioned to benefit from strong underlying growth but we believe a few upcoming clinical trial read-outs carry more downside risk than upside risk. Indeed, we believe the Lifitegrast Phase III trial and the Vyvanse in Major Depression Disorder may not have selected the right type of patients and could lead to disappointing results. Moreover, we believe Shire could face negative sentiment risk around the challenge of the Vyvanse patent in mid-2014 and prefer staying on the side-line for now, downgrading to neutral.
