Deutsche Bank has reiterated its Sell rating on AstraZeneca (LSE:AZN), the Cambridge-headquartered pharmaceutical group, with a price target of 11,500p that implies roughly 10% downside from the last close of 12,834p.
Analyst Emmanuel Papadakis said the roughly 7% share-price fall following the Phase III CARDIO-TTRansform trial miss for heart drug Wainua was about double what the clinical result alone would justify, pointing instead to a market reassessment of research and development risk across AstraZeneca's pipeline.
The trial failed to meet its composite cardiovascular mortality and events primary endpoint in transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, a result Papadakis had flagged premarket the day it broke; he now frames the subsequent investor conversations as centred on an unappealing setup over the next six to nine months rather than the isolated data miss.
Deutsche Bank initiated the Sell call in May, citing mixed pipeline signals and cumulative uncertainty roughly AstraZeneca's larger clinical programmes, with the Wainua outcome now feeding directly into that thesis ahead of the company's upcoming R&D update.
