Atlas Funds Management chief investment officer Hugh Dive said that after the latest upgrade CSL was trading on around 35 times forward earnings. Mr Dive, who is a major shareholder, cautioned that a lot of the good news was already priced into the stock.
“There are three things to the upgrade: Seqirus is performing well, higher than expected sales of the two specialty plasma products and the phasing of investment in the heart attack clinical trials – so two of three are considered to be high quality components,” he said.
“Of the $US130-odd million upgrade, the market would like to know what is the contribution of new sales revenue versus timing spend on the clinical trials, a cost which is being shifted into 2019.”
CSL delivers profit upgrade on better sales, flu season
CSL has delivered its second profit upgrade this year on improved sales of its hemophilia drugs and a bad northern hemisphere flu season, propelling its share price to a record high and and market capitalisation above that of two of the four big banks.