Vertex Pharmaceuticals at , here’s why

For Vertex stock, its troubles started innocently enough at a conference on Nov. 14, when the company’s chief operating officer made a comment about the trial design for its non-opioid painkiller-it isn’t being tested against a placebo. That was enough to cause the stock to fall 9% over three days-and it hasn’t recovered since, despite a market rally, Jacob Sonenshine writes in this week’s edition of Barron’s. Vertex is targeting roughly $4B in sales for the new painkiller and while it’s difficult to predict those sales’ profit margins, X-548 could eventually generate an additional $1.5B in net income from next year’s expected $4.31B, the author says.