One of our special focuses in the latest issue of the Wall Street Transcript is on Specialty Pharmaceuticals. We asked several analysts to talk to us about what the economic downturn is going to mean for this space. Louise Chen of Collins Stewart, LLC had this to say:

Ms. Chen: I think what you’re seeing in health care in general is that health care is no longer a defensive space. A lot of healthcare companies in the space that I cover, the spec pharma companies, get a portion of their income from discretionary spending. Allergan (AGN) and Medicis (MRX) have medical aesthetic products, and as a result of the economic downturn, consumers are pulling back on spending for these things. Advanced Medical Optics (EYE), which is being acquired by Abbott (ABT), that company did lasik surgery and that’s thousands of dollars out of pocket. So you’ll see that stock also getting hurt by the economic downturn. That’s a trend that we’re seeing going forward in the spec pharma space.

For the complete Specialty Pharmaceuticals report, including a complete interview with Ms. Chen as well as interviews with analysts covering a variety of aspects of this space, click here. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Healthcare Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.