Mizuho Securities analyst, Irina Koffler, reiterated her Outperform rating on shares of Horizon Pharma (NASDAQ: HZNP). The analyst believes that contracting activity is likely to pick up in the back half of the year. Yesterday during market hours, the release of the 2017 Express Scripts exclusion list, followed by the CVS/Caremark Removals/Updates list after the close offered insights into distribution partners. Horizon's pain drugs, Duexis and Vimovo, were again excluded from Express Scripts and the stock sold off rapidly towards the end of the trading session on the news. This morning the company announced that Duexis and Vimovo will added back to the CVS/Caremark formulary list (representing 75M PBM members). This as a positive development and the analyst did not expect the company to pursue contracting this quickly, and had considered it a more realistic possibility for 2018. Duexis and Vimovo still remain excluded from the Express Scripts Preferred Drug List (representing 85M members, exclusion is unchanged from previous years). Management has indicated, however, that it sees a pathway to a potential partnership with Express Scripts beginning in 2017. Negotiations with other PBMs/payers are ongoing and we may therefore see more near-term progress.

No change to the price target of $24.

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Shares of Horizon Pharma closed at $18.89 yesterday.