Leerink Partners Downgrades Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY) to Market Perform

Leerink Partners downgraded Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) from Outperform to Market Perform with a price target of $40.00 (from $107.00) after the company discontinued development of revusiran.

Analyst Michael Schmidt commented, "We are downgrading ALNY to Market Perform following today's news that the company has discontinued development of revusiran which had been in a randomized Phase III trial ("ENDEAVOUR") for the treatment of hereditary ATTR amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (hATTR-CM). ALNY observed an imbalance in mortality rate in the treatment arm, after unblinding the trial due to safety concerns. Several possible hypotheses exist that could potentially explain the increased mortality rate in the absence of more specific information, and ALNY is currently analyzing the data with an investor update planned in the near future. We do believe ALNY's leading therapeutic RNAi platform holds tremendous potential and other programs which are based on more potent next-gen technology are at this point not affected by today's news. Our lower rating and PT however reflect an increased level of uncertainty around ALNY's pipeline; we have removed revusiran from our valuation and increased the discount rate to reflect higher platform risk, resulting in our new $40/share PT."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Alnylam Pharmaceuticals click here. For more ratings news on Alnylam Pharmaceuticals click here.

Shares of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals closed at $70.30 yesterday.

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