Marijuana shares have just received a boost from JPMorgan

by druginc

Cannabis stocks took another step towards respect on Wall Street today, when JPMorgan reported on Outperform-rated GW Pharmaceuticals in August. The bank raised $ 345 million for the drug developer in an October stock, and believes that GW Pharmaceutical's cannabis-derived drug Epidiolex could exceed annual sales of epilepsy patients by $ 2023 billion by 1.

Analyst Cory Kasimov set a $ 134 price target for the US US stock (ticker: GWPH) shares, and investors have moved Wednesday trading shares by around 5% to $ 102,25. GW has about a dozen street purchase recommendations, but most are from smaller brokers and cannabis boutiques.

Among the driving forces behind cannabis legalization around the world are unproven medical claims about the drug's effectiveness in treating diseases ranging from cancer to schizophrenia. GW has set an example that others will hopefully follow by testing Epidiolex in appropriate clinical trials, such as the two reported in NYU Langone School of Medicine neurologist Orrin Devinsky's New England Journal of Medicine.

After those rigorous studies showed the drug's effectiveness in reducing seizures in children suffering from congenital epilepsy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quickly approved Epidiolex for those indications.

Kasimov claims that doctors will prescribe GW Pharma's product for epilepsy patients that goes beyond the first two FDA-approved indications, making Epidiolex a blockbuster seller. Still, he doesn't envision profits for GW until the fiscal year ending September 2022, when he predicts it will earn 46 cents a share, followed by 96 cents in fiscal 2023.

The Cambridge, UK-based company has other cannabinoids in the pipeline and should not start generic drug competition until the end of the 2020s, says Kasimov. He also kicked off what will likely be an epidemic of weed puns, beginning his report thus: “To be blunt, we think GW could go higher…”

Read the full article Barrons.com (source)

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