Piper Jaffray Overweight On Akorn

Piper Jaffray is out with a research report on Akorn, Inc. AKRX and it has an Overweight rating and a $10 price target on shares. In a note to clients, Piper Jaffray writes, "Yesterday, Akorn reported 2Q11 GAAP diluted EPS of $0.17, with adjusted EPS of $0.08 well ahead of our estimate of $0.06 and the Street estimate of $0.05. Strong volume growth and pricing power (particularly for the ophthalmics business) were significant drivers of the 59% growth in revenue for 2Q11 over 2Q10 (around 40% excluding $3.7M of sales from the recently acquired Advanced Vision Research (AVR)). With strong growth for the base generics business (prescriptions (Rx) for AKRX products grew by 40% in 2Q11 over 2Q10, per IMS), a deep generics pipeline plus the build-out of the over-the-counter (OTC) business, we believe that EPS growth of at least 20%-25% over the next several years is achievable. We reiterate our Overweight rating and $10 price target." Shares of AKRX gained 44 cents yesterday to close at $7.67.