BioTuesdays

Leerink starts scPharmaceuticals at OP; PT $20

scPharmaceuticals

Leerink launched coverage of scPharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:SCPH) with an “outperform” rating and $20 price target. The stock closed at $14.92 on Dec 11.

“The lead product, Furoscix (furosemide, diuresis for heart failure patients), in our view, has a high likelihood for getting approved at the upcoming June 23, 2018 PDUFA,” writes analyst Ami Fadia.

She said Furoscix could gain high-single digits market share by 2025 and grow to more than $600-million in sales by 2025. In addition, “the company is leveraging its proprietary platform to other IV products that could be moved from a high-cost healthcare setting to at-home subcutaneous administration, which can drive upside to our estimates,” she added.

Ms. Fadia said Furoscix targets a total addressable market of four million events a year or more than $5.5-billion in the U.S.

Heart failure patients are typically on chronic oral furosemide to manage diuresis. However, there are three million hospital-based and one million clinic-based events per year in the U.S., where the patients are no longer well-controlled on the oral medication and needs to be admitted to receive IV furosemide, which has better bioavailability than the oral, she added.

Ms. Fadia said scPharmaceuticals also has rights to the core technology for developing subcutaneous formulations of antibiotics with an IP estate past 2030 that would extend to future products.

“It has already demonstrated comparable pharmacodynamics for a subcutaneous formulation of Ceftriaxone (infectious disease) to the IV and plans further clinical work, with data estimated in the second half of 2018,” she added.