Longboard initiated with an Outperform at Baird on ‘best-in-class potential

As previously reported, Baird analyst Joel Beatty initiated coverage of Longboard Pharmaceuticals (LBPH) with an Outperform rating and $36 price target. As the neuroscience biotech spinout of Arena Pharmaceuticals. Longboard’s agents came out of the same “leading” GPCR drug discovery engine as Arena’s agents and “just like Arena a few years ago,” Longboard has two lead agents that each “appear on track to have a meaningfully differentiated best-in-class profile for an area of high interest to large biotech/pharma companies,” says the analyst, who notes that Arena was acquired by Pfizer (PFE) in 2022 for about $6.7B.