Amicus Therapeutics: Acquisition Premium Caps Upside, Driving Neutral Stance at BioMarin’s $14.50 Offer Price

Leerink Partners analyst Joseph Schwartz downgraded the rating on Amicus to a Hold on December 26, setting a price target of $14.50.

Joseph Schwartz has given his Hold rating due to a combination of factors tied primarily to Amicus’s pending acquisition by BioMarin. He notes that the agreed $14.50 per-share cash offer already embeds a substantial premium to recent trading levels and to the average cost basis of major institutional holders, leaving limited additional upside for public investors. In his view, BioMarin is strategically well aligned with Amicus’s enzyme replacement and rare disease franchise and is likely to extract solid value from the combined commercial infrastructure. However, he also emphasizes that his prior standalone valuation for Amicus implied a somewhat higher total equity value than the agreed deal price, suggesting that the bulk of the upside has now been crystallized in the acquisition terms rather than future stock appreciation.

At the same time, Schwartz highlights that some of the more ambitious longer-term growth narratives around Galafold’s market expansion remain unproven, as the company has yet to clearly demonstrate that pilot initiatives can materially expand the treatable patient pool. He also points out that the recent settlement resolving generic litigation on Galafold, while positive in extending market exclusivity, mainly serves to de-risk BioMarin’s transaction rather than create new incremental upside for Amicus shareholders at this stage. Given the all-cash nature of the deal, the high likelihood of closing, and the unlikelihood of a competing bid emerging, he sees the current share price as largely reflecting the transaction value. As a result, he lowers his price target to the $14.50 offer price and shifts his stance to a neutral, or Hold, recommendation.

According to TipRanks, Schwartz is a top 100 analyst with an average return of 33.7% and a 55.45% success rate. Schwartz covers the Healthcare sector, focusing on stocks such as Fulcrum Therapeutics, Sarepta Therapeutics, and InflaRx.

In another report released on December 19, Cantor Fitzgerald also downgraded the stock to a Hold with a $14.50 price target.