Noor Ul Ain Rehman
5 min read
In This Article:
We recently published a list of 10 Best Low Priced Biotech Stocks to Buy Now. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:RCKT) stands against other best low priced biotech stocks to buy now.
On May 8, Michael Yee, Senior Biotech Analyst at Jefferies, appeared on CNBC to discuss how tariffs and policy risks are pressuring the biotech industry, while simultaneously iterating that low valuations in the sector may present buying opportunities once the uncertainty clears.
Talking about the broader impact of tariffs on the biotech sector, he said that the estimated tariff rate would be around 50%, while the negative EPS impact would be around -4-5%. According to Yee, the sector is facing several challenges that have caused significant pressure and anxiety among biotech investors. One of them is definitely sector-specific tariffs. The 50% estimation is a manageable impact for many of the biotech companies, but there are also other challenges being floated. Another factor is the most favored nations that could drop drug prices by as much as 40% to 50%, making it a related impact. Assuming all these impacts are going into place, there are definitely uncertain downside risks to the model.
However, the takeaway is that many of these stocks are down more than 20-30% and, in fact, are trading at a decade-low P/E multiple. Therefore, while these uncertainties may be out there over the next few weeks or months, the stocks are expected to move higher after that. If we look back at some other stocks with tariffs, many are obviously higher off the bottoms. They have thus fallen to an attractive valuation, which is why there might be an opportunity to buy them.
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Shedding light on the most favored nation policy, Yee said it is not new. It is also not a new concept that the US, on average, pays around 40% to 50% more for drugs as compared to the basket of other, say, five to ten major developed nations. The country also gets its drugs faster, and is the home of innovation.
Many of the pharmaceutical company executives over the past few weeks pointed out that most of those countries are also facing downside issues because of R&D investments, getting the drugs years later, and obviously, the countries aren’t benefiting from access to any of these drugs. However, the United States government does negotiate 15-20 drugs per year and will be doing that for the next decade.
