Bernstein SocGen Group analyst Jeffrey Walch reiterated a Market Perform rating and $11.90 price target on Summit Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: SMMT).

The analyst commented: "AZN & Summit collaboration is much ado about nothing in NSCLC - we project negative overall survival for AVANZAR; The third note in our series The Drug Developers: Bringing the Bench to the Buy Side highlights our significant skepticism of an FDA-approved treatment regimen with Datroway and Ivonescimab in NSCLC (AZN and DS announce clinical collaboration with SMMT to evaluate Datroway in combination with ivonescimab across multiple tumour types; AZN/DS covered by Smith/Sogi). A central lesson from our experiences developing drugs for large cap pharma is the FDA requirement to demonstrate contribution of components or clinical activity of each drug in the experimental regimen. Therefore, the Ph3 trials for Datroway (AVANZAR) and Ivonescimab (HARMONi-3) must both have statistically significant OS to support an FDA-label enabling trial in 1L non-sq NSCLC.

We reiterate our low expectations for Ivonescimab to read-out positive in HARMONi-3’s non-squamous cohort - based on the significant PFS to OS degradation in this histology. Therefore, this note focuses on the last remaining puzzle piece to assess the combination regimen’s probability of technical success (PTS) - Datroway’s AVANZAR trial. We highlight our low PTS for AVANZAR’s overall survival analysis in both the non-squamous ITT (~20%) and QCS+ population (~30%) with a ~November/December ‘26 topline. We hypothesize that AVANZAR’s delay is not due to Datroway over-performance. Instead, TropionBreast-02 suggests potential for event censoring due to discordance between investigator vs Blinded Independent Central Review (BICR). Taken together, we still think investors should not be long SMMT and our thesis is not changed at all by the AZN collaboration."

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Shares of Summit Therapeutics plc closed at $16.76 yesterday.