Gilead Sciences GILD 0.57%increase; green up pointing triangle, a biotech company focused on treatments for cancer and HIV, isn’t pitching itself as an obesity-drug developer. But that hasn’t stopped some Wall Street analysts from trying to do that on its behalf.
Seasoned Jefferies analyst Michael Yee published a market-moving note to investors last week: He dug up recent patents and cross-referenced them with prior data to unearth what looked like the makings of an early-stage metabolic program that could one day become an obesity program. There was even data on monkeys to back that up, which the company will be presenting at the American Diabetes Association conference starting later this week, according to Yee.