PTC Therapeutics price target lowered to $57 from $65 at RBC Capital

RBC Capital lowered the firm’s price target on PTC Therapeutics (PTCT) to $57 from $65 and keeps an Outperform rating on the shares after data from the company’s phase 2 PIVOT-HD study of PTC518 in stage 2 and stage 3 Huntington’s disease patients. The firm acknowledges some possible signals for ‘518 in the pre-defined, mechanistically rational earlier-stage population, good safety, which is reassuring, and understandable limitations with HD heterogeneity and to clinical and biomarker assays. Still, RBC believes the entirety of the results just does not look quite as promising as the earlier cut. While it had not expected statistical significance clinical score benefits and always expected PTC would need some phase 3 results to satisfy FDA, today’s more mixed data may push regulators to want more from phase 3 prior to approval, and adds risk to future studies, the firm argues.