Roche was one of the SMI's biggest risers on the Zurich stock exchange on Friday, as Deutsche Bank raised its recommendation on the stock from 'sell' to 'hold'.

At 10:20 a.m., the Swiss biopharmaceutical group's shares were up by around 1%, while the SMI was up by 0.5% at the same time.

Deutsche Bank, which had been selling the stock since January 2023, believes that the unfavorable market sentiment surrounding the stock could improve this year thanks to encouraging data in obesity.

In his view, the results unveiled yesterday for CT-388 are sufficiently interesting to embody a credible alternative to competing products from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in a medium/long-term perspective.

According to DB, this factor could help offset more worrying factors, such as the recent failure of the clinical trial in myasthenia gravis, or the growing competition from HD Eylea (Regeneron) on sales of Vabysmo in diabetic macular edema.

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