Goldman Sachs Analyst Neutral Rating of MannKind Feels Like Downgrade

Health and Healthcare

Published: October 20, 2014 1:30 pm

Last Updated: October 20, 2014 1:32 pm

There had been some brief hopes that the worst was over for struggling MannKind Corp. (NASDAQ: MNKD). It turns out that not all great FDA approvals end up being great news, at least not for shareholders. On Monday came word that MannKind was started as Neutral and assigned a $6 price target by Goldman Sachs.

Needless to say, the formal rating is not being deemed an endorsement of any sort. The drop in shares might even make many investors think that this was almost the equivalent to a downgrade. After all, a Neutral rating from firm as prestigious as Goldman Sachs is just not very positive.

After looking at some of the commentary, we see why MannKind shares were down by about 3% on the day. Goldman Sachs analyst Jay Olson has noted that MannKind’s drop of over 50% since June values the company more or less where it should be. He expects low profitability, and he expects it to be handily under earnings projections from the street out to 2018. In fact, he is not even looking for the firm to post profits until 2017. Another risk seen in the analyst call is that MannKind likely will have high costs in sales and general and administrative costs (SG&A).

24/7 Wall St. noted before that the deal struck with Sanofi looked as though it handily favored Sanofi, and Goldman Sachs said the deal had challenging and complex deal terms that should become more clear with each quarter’s earnings.

Having a $6 price target is far short of the $15+ that the 24/7 Wall St. poll told us right after the Afrezza approval by the FDA. That poll even came from nearly 2,000 respondents. Sadly, investors had no idea at the time that the terms would be so one-sided in favor of Sanofi.

ALSO READ: 5 Beaten Down Biotech Stocks With Huge Upside Potential

Another ongoing show of force against MannKind was the most recent short interest data released in the past week or so. The end of September’s short interest reading was 78,579,323 shares. That wasn’t just a gain in the bets against the company, it was the highest short interest of 2014, and with the highest days to cover reading of 2014 as well.

MannKind shares were down 3.1% at $5.51 in mid-afternoon trading on Monday. Its 52-week range is $3.80 to $11.48.

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