Cannabis stocks saw a surge of optimism today as Wall Street took a massive step forward in making the industry more respectable as a whole. In particular, shares of biotech company GW Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ: GWPH) climbed around 4 percent after J.P. Morgan launched coverage of the company with a bullish “Outperform” rating.
The investment bank, which raised $345 million for GW back in an October stock offering, now believes that the company’s new Epidiolex drug could end up with $1 billion annual sales in 2023 from epilepsy patients alone.
According to Barrons, J.P. Morgan analyst Cory Kasimov started coverage of the biotech company with a bullish rating and estimated that the share price would rise 32% from its current levels. Overall, he sets a target price for GWPH at around $134. While the company has around a dozen recommendations from Wall Street, most of them are from smaller boutique firms and brokers, not a major investment institution.
“In our view, the company is a clear leader in the field of cannabinoid science and drug development, now with two regulatory approvals (Epidiolex and Sativex) under its belt, a respectable pipeline of additional assets across an array of therapeutic indications, and a proprietary research/manufacturing platform that should enable it to sustain further growth,” Kasimov mentioned.
One of the chief drivers for medical cannabis legalization internationally has been the medical claims (some of them being questionable) regarding the plants effectiveness of treating a variety of illnesses, from epilepsy, chronic pain, to more extreme conditions such as schizophrenia and cancer. GW stands out in this regard in comparison to other firms in that they’ve taken a rigorous approach to testing their new Epidiolex drug with proper clinical trials, two of which have been reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The J.P. Morgan analyst also went on to note that GW had other cannabinoid products in the pipeline and notes that there likely won’t be much competition in the cannabinoid drug market until a few years down the line. “To be blunt, we think GW could go higher…” he added.
GW Pharmaceuticals Company Profile
Founded in 1998, GW is a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing novel therapeutics from its proprietary cannabinoid product platform in a broad range of disease areas. GW, along with its U.S. subsidiary Greenwich Biosciences, has received U.S. FDA approval for EPIDIOLEX (cannabidiol) oral solution for the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) or Dravet syndrome in patients two years of age or older and which is now available by prescription in the U.S.
The Company has submitted a regulatory application in Europe for the adjunctive treatment of seizures associated with LGS and Dravet syndrome. The company continues to evaluate EPIDIOLEX in additional rare epilepsy conditions and currently has an ongoing clinical trial in tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC). GW commercialized the world’s first plant-derived cannabinoid prescription drug, Sativex® (nabiximols), which is approved for the treatment of spasticity due to multiple sclerosis in numerous countries outside the United States and for which the company is now planning a U.S. Phase 3 trial. The Company has a deep pipeline of additional cannabinoid product candidates which includes compounds in Phase 1 and 2 trials for epilepsy, glioblastoma, and schizophrenia. –GW Pharmaceuticals
