Analyst: Alexion Pharmaceuticals Pipeline Is Undervalued

Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALXN) is getting insufficient credit from investors for its development pipeline, an analyst said Wednesday.

The company's sole commercial product, Soliris, is approved for treating two rare blood disorders and produced sales last year of about $2.23 billion.

But Deutsche Bank's Robyn Karnauskas said the 23-year-old company's pipeline "isn't in the numbers" used by Wall Street to value its shares.

Alexion is expected to issue Phase II trial data later this year on its anti-inflammatory antibody AXLN1007 for gastropod-intestinal complications arising from bone-marrow transplants, according to Karnauskas, who maintained a Buy rating and $215 target.

A second indication for use of the drug may also get disclosed, and Alexion sees seven new indications or product approvals by 2018, Karnauskas said.

The company got its start in 1992 by a group of Yale University scientists studying genetically modified pig organs for possible transplant into ailing humans, part of a field called xenotransplantation.

Although pig organs are no longer part of Alexion's pipeline, its efforts related to solving organ rejection transplant recipients lead to much of the company's current technology.