Citi upgrades Travere to Buy into full Filspari approval decision

Citi analyst Carly Kenselaar upgraded Travere Therapeutics to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $10, up from $7. Following the “positive” pre-new drug application meeting for Filspari in immunoglobulin A nephropathy and “bullish” commentary from FDA expert Yaning Wang during a recent call, the analyst is incrementally more positive on the likelihood of conversion to full approval. Although the FDA generally does not solicit opinions on the sufficiency of a dataset to support approval in the context of a pre-NDA meeting, the agency’s support of a Q1 of 2024 filing suggests Filspari is unlikely to be pulled from the market as some may have initially feared and rules out the need for additional data pre-filing, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm believes Travere’s risk/reward is “skewed quite favorably into a full approval decision.”