[PR Newswire] – INDIANAPOLIS, March 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) today announced a change to the primary endpoint for the EXPEDITION3 clinical trial, a Phase 3 study of solanezumab in people with mild Alzheimer’s dementia. The original study design included co-primary endpoints of cognition and function—measured by ADAS-Cog14 (Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive subscale) and ADCS-iADL (Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study-Instrumental Activities of Daily Living), respectively. Emerging scientific evidence supports the idea that cognitive decline precedes and predicts functional decline in Alzheimer’s disease, particularly in earlier stages of the disease.1,2,3 Thus, Lilly has decided to amend the EXPEDITION3 trial to include a single primary endpoint of cognition (ADAS-Cog14).
Eli Lilly and Company (LLY), currently valued at $75.44B, started trading this morning at $71.65. Looking at the stock, its one day range is $69.60 to $72.00 with the price of the stock fluctuating between $69.60 to $92.85 over the last 52 weeks.
LLY shares are currently priced at 20.88x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry’s 2.70x forward p/e ratio. And for income investors, the company pays shareholders $2.04 per share annually in dividends, yielding 2.73%.
Consensus earnings for the current quarter by the 17 sell-side analysts covering the stock is an estimate of $0.84 per share, which would be $0.03 worse than the year-ago quarter and a $0.02 sequential decrease. What we find to be interesting is that the full-year EPS estimate of $3.54 is a $0.11 improvement when compared to the previous year’s annual results. The quarterly earnings estimate is based on a consensus revenue forecast of the current quarter of $4.82 Billion. If realized, that would be a 3.88% increase over the year-ago quarter.
Recently, BMO Capital Markets upgraded LLY from Market Perform to Outperform (Nov 13, 2015). Previously, Credit Suisse upgraded LLY from Neutral to Outperform. Investors should keep in mind is that the average price target is $96.05, which is 34.05% above where the stock opened this morning.
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