Deutsche Bank has kept its sell rating and 11,500p price target on AstraZeneca PLC (LSE:AZN, NASDAQ:AZN), the FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals giant, with the shares at 13,064p.
The bank's analyst judged the company's investor event at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference in Chicago as broadly incremental, acknowledging AZ's formidable oncology track record while pointing to unresolved questions that temper enthusiasm.
The most closely watched data at ASCO was the phase III EMERALD-3 trial, which showed AstraZeneca's immunotherapy combination of Imfinzi (durvalumab) and Imjudo (tremelimumab), paired with lenvatinib and transarterial chemoembolisation (TACE), cut the risk of disease progression or death by 30% versus TACE alone in patients with unresectable liver cancer eligible for embolisation.
Despite the positive readout, Deutsche flagged uncertainty over whether EMERALD-3 will secure regulatory approval, a question it sees as unresolved alongside similar concerns about SERENA-6, AstraZeneca's breast cancer study of camizestrant, a next-generation oestrogen receptor degrader.
The bank also noted that ASCO 2026 marks the first conference since 2018 at which AstraZeneca has not featured in the prestigious plenary session, ending a remarkable eight-year run.
A second Deutsche Bank note, arising from a call with AstraZeneca's head of cardiovascular and renal research and development, flagged 2027 as a potentially significant year for pipeline catalysts, with phase III readouts expected for oral PCSK9 inhibitor laroprovstat, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist balcinrenone and endothelin receptor antagonist zibotentan.
More immediately, the bank expressed caution over the early commercial trajectory of Baxfendy, a first-in-class hypertension treatment that recently received FDA approval, describing a third-party prescriber poll on the launch as mixed.
AstraZeneca's Wainua RNA-interference therapy for hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis is also expected to deliver a pivotal trial result in 2026, adding to a busy near-term catalyst schedule.
