Aegerion Pharmaceuticals (AEGR) Earnings Crushes Shares

Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AEGR) saw a big move Friday, as the company’s shares plunged by over 40% on the day. The move came on a massive volume too with the issue trading more than 18.2M shares, compared to the average volume of 1.28M. This stock, trading at a volatile range of $33.38–$34.21 in the past 3-month time frame, showed a sharp decline yesterday at $20.19. AEGR began trading at $22.86 to finish the session down $14.02, or 40.98%, from the prior days close of $34.21. On an intraday basis it got as low as $19.10 and as high as $23.00. The nosedive came after the company reported a 3Q net loss of $3.5M, and a significant downward revision of its 2014 full-year guidance. Aegerion said its fiscal 2014 net product sale expectations of Juxtapid, the firm’s flagship cholesterol drug, are now expected in the range of $150M − $160M vs a previous guidance of $180M − $200M.

CEO Marc D. Beer said in a press release addressing some of the sales problems with Juxtapid that the company “continue[s] to believe in the overall market potential of JUXTAPID. However, we are reducing our full year’s sales estimates at this time to reflect both higher patient dropout rates and lower U.S. prescription growth rates than previously anticipated following the commercial investments we made earlier this year.”

Deutsche Bank (DB) was one of the Wall Street firms that downgraded Aegerion Friday morning after its earnings report. It cut Aegerion to a ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ and lowered the name’s PT to $26 from $58, citing questions about the management’s ability to execute and firm’s lowered assumptions. AEGR was also downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Jefferies, and to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JP Morgan (JPM).

On valuation measures, Aegerion Pharmaceuticals’ current year and next year EPS growth estimates stand at 58.40% and 156.00%, respectively. The name has a t-12 price/sales of 7.56, and mrq-price/book ratio of 6.14. EPS for the same period registers at ($1.55).

AEGR’s shares have declined 41.98% in the last 4 weeks and 38.86% in the past three months. Over the past 5 trading sessions the stock has lost 34.15%.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company, which is currently valued at $584.94M, has a median Wall Street price target of $26.50 with a high target of $107.00. AEGR is down 75.62% year-over-year, and 71.55% year-to-date.

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