Amgen Drops 7% as Novartis Heart Drug Trial Fails — SkimNews
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- Amgen stock dropped 7.1% to $406.41 in early Tuesday trading after Novartis's pelacarsen failed its phase three primary endpoint
- Novartis disclosed Friday that pelacarsen missed its primary endpoint in a phase three cardiovascular trial; Amgen's competing olpasiran is slated for its own phase three readout in mid-2028
- Cantor analyst Carter Gould wrote that the Street had already been pricing in a 65%+ probability of success for Amgen, making the post-news selloff unsurprising given the two-year wait for data
- BMO Capital downgraded Amgen to Market Perform from Outperform, holding its $450 price target, with analyst Evan David Seigerman noting shares are up 34% year-to-date but trade at a premium to faster-growing peers
- Novartis's Swiss-listed shares plunged 10% on Tuesday and had already closed 3.1% lower Monday, compounding the blow from a separate disappointing neuromuscular trial
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 481 points, or 0.9%; Amgen is one of the blue-chip index's 30 constituent companies
Why it matters: A single peer-trial miss vaporized roughly 7.1% of Amgen's value in one session and triggered a downgrade — stark evidence of how rival readouts can crater valuations when Street confidence is already above 65%, as Cantor analyst Carter Gould flagged, leaving Amgen investors to wait until mid-2028 for olpasiran's own verdict.
Ask SkimNews
