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VRTX $494.61

VRTX target price
494.61
0
440
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated
Type
Corporation
Traded as NASDAQ: VRTX
NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 500 Component
Industry Pharmaceuticals & Biotherapeutics)
Founded 1989
Headquarters Boston, Massachusetts
Key people
  • Jeffrey Leiden, M.D., Ph.D., Chair, President and CEO
  • Stuart A. Arbuckle, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer
  • Kenneth L. Horton, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer
  • Lisa Kelly-Croswell, Senior Vice President, Human Resources
  • David Altshuler, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Global Research, and Chief Scientific Officer
  • Megan Pace, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications
  • Amit K. Sachdev, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Public Policy
  • Ian F. Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Products Product Pipeline]
Revenue Increase US$1.4 billion (2011)
Website www.vrtx.com

Vertex Pharmaceuticals is an American Pharmaceutical company based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Vertex was founded in 1989 by Joshua Boger and Kevin J. Kinsella. Vertex was one of the first biotech firms to use an explicit strategy of rational drug design rather than combinatorial chemistry.

By 2004, its product pipeline focused on viral infections, inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, and cancer. It maintains headquarters in South Boston, Massachusetts, and two research facilities, in San Diego, California, and Oxford, England. The company's beginnings were profiled by Barry Werth in the 1994 book The Billion-Dollar Molecule and its further development in his 2014 book, The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma. In 2009, the company had about 1,800 employees, including 1,200 in the Boston area.

In January 2014, Vertex completed its move from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Boston, Massachusetts, and took residence in a new, $800 million complex. Located on the South Boston waterfront, it will mark the first time in the company's history that all of the roughly 1,200 Vertex employees in the Greater Boston area will be working together.

Since late 2011, when Jeffrey M. Leiden joined Vertex as CEO, Vertex has ranked among the top 15 best performing companies on the Standard & Poor’s 500. Vertex shares increased 250 percent in the same period. Vertex posted only one annual profit since it was founded in 1989.

In May 2011, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug telaprevir (Incivek), an oral treatment for hepatitis C marketed by Vertex. Development and commercialization of telaprevir is shared with Johnson & Johnson for European distribution and Mitsubishi for Asia. Telaprevir is a protease inhibitor.

In 2012 ivacaftor, was designated as an orphan drug, identifying cystic fibrosis as affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. On January 31, 2012, Vertex gained FDA approval of the first drug, Kalydeco, to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis rather than the symptoms, in patients 6 years or older who have the G551D gene mutation. In the US, 30,000 people have cystic fibrosis. About 4% of those, or 1,200, have the G551D gene mutation. Vertex is marketing the drug at $307,000 a year per patient. Vertex also is studying ivacaftor in combination with another drug (lumacaftor) for the most common mutation in CF, known as F508del, and expects the first set of results in 2012. Vertex worked for 13 years with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to develop the drug.

In the UK, the company provided the drug free for a limited time for certain patients, then left the hospitals to decide whether to continue to pay for it for those patients. UK agencies estimated the cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) at between £335,000 and £1,274,000—far above the NICE thresholds of £20,000-£30,000.

On November 5, 2014 Vertex announced the submission of a New Drug Application (NDA) to the FDA for a fully co-formulated combination of lumacaftor and ivacaftor for people with cystic fibrosis ages 12 and older who have two copies of the F508del mutation in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene. In 2015, FDA approved Orkambi lumacaftor/ivacaftor to treat cystic fibrosis (CF) in patients 12 years and older, who have the F508del mutation.

In 2016, the company entered into a collaboration with Moderna, in fact taking an ownership stake in the company, to develop new mRNA-based therapeutics to treat CF.

In the late 1990s the Bethesda-based Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, encouraged by then-President Robert Beall, began investing in Vertex— when it was a small start-up biotechnology company— to help fund the development of Kalydeco in the form of venture philanthropy. The total investment amounted to $150 million. In 2014, the CF Foundation sold the rights to the royalties of the drugs for $3.3 billion, twenty times the Foundation’s 2013 budget.

By 2015 the annual cost of Kalydeco had risen to more than $300,000 per patient.

According to an article published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Vertex executives "grossed more than $100 million by cashing in stocks and stock options" and at "one point, the value of company's stock increased more $6 billion in a single day."

Twenty-nine physicians and scientists working with people with cystic fibrosis (CF) wrote to Jeff Leiden, CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals to plead for lower prices.

"We are aware of the financial complexities of the huge expenses for R & D with respect to the small number of patients or the market system that enables these advances to become reality. Yet -- notwithstanding all your patient support programs -- it is at best unseemly for Vertex to charge our patients’ insurance plans (including strapped state medical assistance plans), $294,000 annually for two pills a day (a 10-fold increase in a typical patient's total drug costs). This action could appear to be leveraging pain and suffering into huge financial gain for speculators, some of whom were your top executives who reportedly made millions of dollars in a single day (Boston Globe, May 29)."

The company responded in an email that "while publicly funded academic research provided important early understanding of the cause of cystic fibrosis, it took Vertex scientists 14 years of their own research, funded mostly by the company, before the drug won approval."

On April 15, 2015 in Cambridge, MA, Joan Finnegan Brooks of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, spoke about the role of Vertex and venture philanthropy to a panel of biotech leaders hosted by Life Sciences Foundation on the topic of patient advocacy in the biotech industry. While Brooks, who has Cystic Fibrosis, expressed gratitude for Vertex' development of Kalydeco, she observed that 25% of Cystic Fibrosis patients are not getting the medical care they need because of the prohibitive cost of the drug.

Q reports

Period Date Adjusted Actuals EPS GAAP EPS
Q3 2022 2022-10-31 Future report Set alerts
Q2 2022 2022-08-04 3.60 3.60
Q1 2022 2022-05-05 3.52 3.52
Q4 2021 2022-01-26 3.37 3.37
Q3 2021 2021-11-02 3.56 3.56
Q2 2021 2021-07-29 3.11 3.11
Q1 2021 2021-04-29 2.98 2.98
Q4 2020 2021-02-01 2.51 2.51
Q3 2020 2020-10-29 2.64 2.64
Q2 2020 2020-07-30 2.61 2.61

Ratings

2016-07-07 Reiterated Rating Maxim Group Hold
2016-06-18 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy
2016-06-18 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Cos. Buy
2016-06-17 Reiterated Rating Jefferies Group Buy $103.00
2016-06-16 Reiterated Rating Credit Suisse Buy
2016-06-16 Reiterated Rating Credit Suisse Group AG Buy
2016-05-31 Reiterated Rating Jefferies Group Buy
2016-05-12 Reiterated Rating Morgan Stanley Buy
2016-05-01 Reiterated Rating Robert W. Baird Outperform $144.00 to $128.00
2016-04-28 Lower Price Target Barclays Overweight $135.00 to $110.00
2016-04-28 Downgrade Goldman Sachs Buy to Neutral $109.00 to $88.00
2016-04-28 Lower Price Target RBC Capital Outperform $135.00 to $115.00
2016-04-28 Reiterated Rating Leerink Swann Buy
2016-04-28 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2016-04-28 Reiterated Rating HC Wainwright Buy $155.00
2016-04-28 Reiterated Rating Maxim Group Hold
2016-04-28 Downgrade Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Buy to Neutral $109.00 to $88.00
2016-04-28 Lower Price Target Barclays PLC Overweight $135.00 to $110.00
2016-04-28 Lower Price Target Royal Bank Of Canada Outperform $135.00 to $115.00
2016-04-25 Reiterated Rating Robert W. Baird Buy
2016-04-17 Reiterated Rating Cowen and Company Hold
2016-04-11 Lower Price Target Credit Suisse Outperform $143.00 to $112.00
2016-04-10 Reiterated Rating Leerink Swann Outperform
2016-04-07 Initiated Coverage BMO Capital Markets Market Perform $90.00
2016-04-06 Lower Price Target Jefferies Group Buy $108.00
2016-04-04 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Buy
2016-04-01 Lower Price Target Stifel Nicolaus Buy $140.00 to $108.00
2016-03-28 Lower Price Target Guggenheim Buy $145.00 to $114.00
2016-03-27 Reiterated Rating Jefferies Group Buy $116.00
2016-03-23 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy
2016-03-23 Lower Price Target Goldman Sachs Buy $129.00 to $106.00
2016-03-19 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Buy
2016-03-18 Lower Price Target RBC Capital Outperform $145.00 to $135.00
2016-03-15 Reiterated Rating Bank of America Neutral $108.00
2016-03-15 Reiterated Rating Bank of America Corp. Neutral $108.00
2016-03-14 Reiterated Rating Leerink Swann Outperform $128.00
2016-03-11 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Overweight $131.00
2016-03-10 Reiterated Rating Maxim Group Hold
2016-03-08 Reiterated Rating Leerink Swann Outperform $131.00 to $128.00
2016-03-08 Reiterated Rating Cowen and Company Market Perform $95.00
2016-02-22 Lower Price Target Goldman Sachs $135.00 to $129.00
2016-02-11 Initiated Coverage Oppenheimer Market Perform
2016-02-11 Initiated Coverage Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. Market Perform
2016-02-08 Reiterated Rating Cowen and Company Market Perform $95.00
2016-02-08 Reiterated Rating Maxim Group Hold
2016-02-06 Reiterated Rating Leerink Swann Buy
2016-02-04 Initiated Coverage Leerink Swann Outperform $131.00
2016-02-04 Lower Price Target Argus Buy $154.00 to $140.00
2016-02-03 Reiterated Rating HC Wainwright Buy $155.00
2016-02-01 Upgrade Jefferies Group Hold to Buy $142.00 to $120.00
2016-01-30 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Overweight $180.00 to $143.00
2016-01-28 Lower Price Target Barclays Overweight $150.00 to $135.00
2016-01-28 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2016-01-28 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Overweight $147.00
2016-01-26 Reiterated Rating Stifel Nicolaus Buy $160.00
2016-01-19 Initiated Coverage Credit Suisse Outperform $151.00
2016-01-19 Reiterated Rating Maxim Group Hold
2016-01-13 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Overweight $153.00
2016-01-12 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2016-01-11 Reiterated Rating Cowen and Company Market Perform $110.00
2016-01-05 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Overweight $180.00
2015-12-01 Initiated Coverage Stifel Nicolaus Buy $160.00 to $160.00
2015-11-26 Upgrade JPMorgan Chase & Co. Neutral to Outperform
2015-11-10 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy
2015-11-05 Reiterated Rating Guggenheim Buy
2015-10-30 Upgrade HC Wainwright Neutral to Buy $85.00 to $155.00
2015-10-29 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy $163.00 to $180.00
2015-10-29 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2015-10-29 Boost Price Target Morgan Stanley $152.00
2015-10-29 Boost Price Target JPMorgan Chase & Co. $153.00
2015-10-27 Reiterated Rating Oppenheimer Hold
2015-10-27 Reiterated Rating Robert W. Baird Buy $160.00
2015-10-27 Reiterated Rating William Blair Buy $158.00
2015-10-26 Lower Price Target JMP Securities Market Outperform $140.00
2015-10-25 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Buy $145.00
2015-10-20 Reiterated Rating Oppenheimer Market Perform
2015-10-14 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Overweight $146.00
2015-10-14 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2015-10-12 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Buy $145.00
2015-10-02 Upgrade Morgan Stanley Equal Weight to Overweight $118.00 to $148.00
2015-09-28 Upgrade Argus Hold to Buy $103.28 to $126.00
2015-09-23 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Buy $145.00
2015-09-22 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy $163.00
2015-09-15 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy
2015-09-15 Initiated Coverage Nomura Buy $162.00
2015-09-15 Initiated Coverage Nomura Holdings Inc. Buy $162.00
2015-09-14 Upgrade Barclays Equal Weight to Overweight $120.00 to $150.00
2015-09-08 Initiated Coverage Jefferies Group Hold $130.00
2015-07-31 Reiterated Rating Deutsche Bank Buy $155.00
2015-07-31 Reiterated Rating Deutsche Bank AG Buy $155.00
2015-07-30 Reiterated Rating JMP Securities Buy $145.00 to $148.00
2015-07-30 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2015-07-29 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Overweight
2015-07-24 Reiterated Rating HC Wainwright Neutral $85.00
2015-07-07 Boost Price Target William Blair Outperform $138.00 to $158.00
2015-07-07 Lower Price Target Morgan Stanley $120.00 to $119.00
2015-07-07 Lower Price Target JMP Securities Market Outperform $152.00 to $145.00
2015-07-07 Lower Price Target BTIG Research Buy $200.00 to $180.00
2015-07-06 Reiterated Rating HC Wainwright Hold $85.00
2015-07-06 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Overweight $146.00 to $161.00
2015-07-06 Reiterated Rating Leerink Swann Outperform $150.00 to $158.00
2015-07-06 Boost Price Target Bank of America Neutral $130.00 to $133.00
2015-07-06 Boost Price Target Robert W. Baird Buy $131.00 to $160.00
2015-07-03 Reiterated Rating Goldman Sachs Buy $142.00
2015-06-23 Boost Price Target RBC Capital Outperform $130.00 to $145.00
2015-06-09 Reiterated Rating JMP Securities Outperform $152.00
2015-06-05 Reiterated Rating Canaccord Genuity Buy $150.00
2015-05-14 Reiterated Rating Canaccord Genuity Buy $150.00
2015-05-14 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Overweight
2015-05-14 Reiterated Rating HC Wainwright Neutral $85.00
2015-05-13 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2015-05-08 Set Price Target RBC Capital Buy $130.00
2015-05-08 Reiterated Rating Robert W. Baird Positive $131.00
2015-05-07 Reiterated Rating William Blair Outperform $126.00 to $138.00
2015-05-03 Reiterated Rating Canaccord Genuity Buy $150.00
2015-04-30 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Hold
2015-04-30 Reiterated Rating JPMorgan Chase & Co. Overweight $130.00 to $138.00
2015-04-30 Boost Price Target Citigroup Inc. Buy $141.00 to $156.00
2015-04-30 Boost Price Target Leerink Swann Outperform $131.00 to $150.00
2015-04-27 Initiated Coverage Oppenheimer Market Perform
2015-04-10 Initiated Coverage Canaccord Genuity Buy $150.00
2015-03-23 Set Price Target Deutsche Bank Buy $155.00
2015-03-11 Reiterated Rating BTIG Research Buy $200.00
2015-01-29 Boost Price Target Credit Suisse Buy $129.00 to $155.00
2015-01-29 Boost Price Target Deutsche Bank Buy $129.00 to $155.00
2015-01-29 Downgrade Maxim Group Buy to Hold $148.00 to $121.00
2015-01-29 Downgrade Needham & Company LLC Buy to Hold
2015-01-13 Reiterated Rating Citigroup Inc. Buy $136.00 to $141.00
2015-01-09 Initiated Coverage Janney Montgomery Scott Neutral $126.00
2015-01-06 Initiated Coverage Barclays Equal Weight $120.00
2015-01-06 Initiated Coverage BTIG Research Buy $200.00
2015-01-05 Set Price Target JPMorgan Chase & Co. Buy $130.00
2014-12-30 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Positive
2014-12-01 Boost Price Target Maxim Group Buy $122.00 to $148.00
2014-11-06 Initiated CRT Capital Buy $175
2014-11-05 Initiated Coverage CRT Capital Buy $175.00
2014-10-29 Reiterated Rating JMP Securities Market Outperform $115.00 to $133.00
2014-10-29 Boost Price Target RBC Capital Outperform $120.00 to $130.00
2014-10-13 Upgrade Wells Fargo & Co. Neutral to Outperform $129.00 to $125.00
2014-10-13 Upgrade Piper Jaffray Neutral to Overweight $87.50 to $125.00
2014-10-13 Upgrade Wells Fargo Neutral to Outperform $129.00 to $125.00
2014-10-10 Reiterated Rating Deutsche Bank Buy $127.00
2014-10-10 Boost Price Target Maxim Group Buy $109.00 to $117.00
2014-10-09 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Outperform $120.00
2014-10-02 Initiated Coverage Guggenheim Buy $147.00
2014-09-17 Reiterated Deutsche Bank Buy $103 to $127
2014-09-16 Boost Price Target Deutsche Bank Buy $103.00 to $127.00
2014-09-10 Reiterated Rating RBC Capital Outperform $120.00
2014-09-05 Upgrade Goldman Sachs Neutral to Buy $109.00 to $131.00
2014-07-07 Downgrade Oppenheimer Outperform to Market Perform
2014-06-25 Reiterated Needham Buy $95 to $115
2014-06-25 Downgrade H.C. Wainwright Buy to Neutral $105 to $85
2014-06-25 Boost Price Target Goldman Sachs $109.00
2014-06-25 Reiterated Rating Citigroup Inc. Buy $103.00 to $136.00
2014-06-25 Boost Price Target Sanford C. Bernstein $65.00 to $107.00
2014-06-25 Boost Price Target Leerink Swann Outperform $100.00 to $125.00
2014-06-25 Downgrade HC Wainwright Buy to Neutral $105.00 to $85.00
2014-06-24 Boost Price Target Maxim Group Buy $92.00 to $107.00
2014-06-24 Boost Price Target Needham & Company LLC Positive to Buy $95.00 to $115.00
2014-06-24 Reiterated Rating Deutsche Bank Buy
2014-06-05 Reiterated Rating HC Wainwright Buy
2014-04-21 Upgrade Ned Davis Research Sell to Neutral
2014-02-24 Boost Price Target Maxim Group Buy $88.00 to $92.00
2013-10-31 Downgrade Sanford C. Bernstein Outperform to Market Perform
2013-10-30 Downgrade Summer Street Research Buy to Neutral
2013-10-30 Lower Price Target Credit Suisse Neutral $80.00 to $78.00
2013-10-30 Downgrade Summer Street Buy to Neutral
2013-10-29 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Buy $95.00
2013-10-29 Lower Price Target Cowen and Company Neutral $87.94 to $80.00
2013-10-29 Reiterated Rating Wells Fargo & Co. Outperform
2013-10-29 Reiterated Rating Wells Fargo Outperform
2013-10-21 Reiterated Rating Needham & Company LLC Buy $95.00
2013-10-16 Lower Price Target Barclays Overweight $95.00 to $92.00
2013-09-18 Reiterated Rating Cowen and Company Hold $88.00
2013-09-18 Boost Price Target Goldman Sachs Buy $79.00 to $85.00
2013-04-19 Reiterated Needham Buy $65 to $95
2013-04-19 Reiterated Chardan Capital Markets Buy $80 to $105
2013-04-10 Initiated Chardan Capital Markets Buy $80
2013-02-07 Initiated Robert W. Baird Outperform $53
2012-11-28 Downgrade Argus Buy to Hold
2012-10-04 Initiated Argus Buy $68
2012-06-27 Initiated Maxim Group Buy $86
2012-05-08 Upgrade Needham Hold to Buy $65
2016-07-07 Reiterated Rating Maxim Group Hold
2016-06-18 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Buy
2016-06-18 Reiterated Rating Piper Jaffray Cos. Buy
2016-06-17 Reiterated Rating Jefferies Group Buy $103.00
2016-06-16 Reiterated Rating Credit Suisse Buy

There is presents forecasts of rating agencies and recommendations for investors about this ticker

Major Shareholders

Name Relationship Total Shares Holding stocks
BOGER JOSHUA S 0.12%  (284088) VRTX /
LEIDEN JEFFREY M CEO & President 0.08%  (190658) DGX / VRTX /
MUELLER PETER EVP, Global R&D, CSO 0.06%  (143517) VRTX /
Chodakewitz Jeffrey SVP GMDA, CMO 0.03%  (73485) TTPH / VRTX /
Horton Kenneth L EVP & Chief Legal Officer 0.03%  (72053) VRTX /
ALTSHULER DAVID 0.03%  (69999) VRTX /
SMITH IAN F EVP & CFO 0.03%  (64495) ACOR / INFI / OPHT / VRTX /
Arbuckle Stuart A EVP\\Chief Commercial Officer 0.02%  (46752) CERU / VRTX /
Sachdev Amit SVP, Global Gov. Strategy 0.02%  (46662) VRTX /
Pace Megan E SVP, Corp. Communications 0.02%  (43350) VRTX /
Parini Michael EVP & CLO 0.02%  (39609) VRTX /
Connolly Thomas SVP, Human Resources 0.01%  (34375) VRTX /
SACHS BRUCE I 0.01%  (26339) VRTX /
Silva Paul M SVP & Corp Controller 0.01%  (16087) VRTX /
Graney Thomas Chief Financial Officer 0.01%  (13289) IRWD / VRTX /