Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) Earning Somewhat Favorable Media Coverage, Report Finds

Media coverage about Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) has trended somewhat positive on Monday, Accern Sentiment Analysis reports. The research firm scores the sentiment of news coverage by analyzing more than twenty million news and blog sources in real time. Accern ranks coverage of publicly-traded companies on a scale of -1 to 1, with scores closest to one being the most favorable. Vertex Pharmaceuticals earned a media sentiment score of 0.24 on Accern’s scale. Accern also assigned media coverage about the pharmaceutical company an impact score of 45.7979045348363 out of 100, indicating that recent news coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an impact on the stock’s share price in the next several days.

These are some of the news headlines that may have effected Accern’s scoring:

• Why Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (VRTX) Stock Isn’t Worth the Risk (investorplace.com)
• Why Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (VRTX) Stock Isn’t Worth the Risk (investorplace.com)
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals May Be Turning Some Major Corners (seekingalpha.com)
• See what the IHS Markit Score report has to say about Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (finance.yahoo.com)
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ:VRTX) Given Consensus Rating of “Buy” by Analysts (americanbankingnews.com)

VRTX has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Stifel Nicolaus increased their target price on Vertex Pharmaceuticals from $130.00 to $154.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 18th. Vetr cut Vertex Pharmaceuticals from a “sell” rating to a “strong sell” rating and set a $102.58 target price on the stock. in a research note on Thursday, April 20th. Jefferies Group LLC reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $126.00 target price on shares of Vertex Pharmaceuticals in a research note on Tuesday, May 2nd. Needham & Company LLC raised Vertex Pharmaceuticals from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $155.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Friday, June 23rd. Finally, Zacks Investment Research raised Vertex Pharmaceuticals from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $144.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, July 4th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-two have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Vertex Pharmaceuticals currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $162.88.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) traded up 0.46% on Monday, hitting $154.49. The stock had a trading volume of 1,082,040 shares. The company has a market cap of $38.95 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 148.41 and a beta of 1.77. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $144.45 and a 200-day moving average price of $116.40. Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a 52-week low of $71.46 and a 52-week high of $167.85.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, July 26th. The pharmaceutical company reported $0.39 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.06 by $0.33. Vertex Pharmaceuticals had a return on equity of 4.64% and a net margin of 12.05%. The firm had revenue of $544.10 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $489.95 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $0.24 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 26.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts predict that Vertex Pharmaceuticals will post $1.60 earnings per share for the current year.

In other news, SVP Paul M. Silva sold 1,289 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $152.88, for a total value of $197,062.32. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 17,923 shares in the company, valued at $2,740,068.24. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Jeffrey M. Leiden sold 147,101 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, June 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $129.50, for a total value of $19,049,579.50. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 312,142 shares in the company, valued at approximately $40,422,389. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 751,042 shares of company stock worth $113,078,257 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 1.80% of the company’s stock.

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Vertex Pharmaceuticals Company Profile

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated is engaged in discovering, developing, manufacturing and commercializing medicines for serious diseases. The Company is focused on developing and commercializing therapies for the treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF) and advancing its research and development programs in other indications.