A Houston critical care physician who was hailed for his work during the COVID-19 pandemic has become the leader of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a physician group that questions vaccine safety, according to theHouston Chronicle
Joseph Varon, MD, was once known for convincing his healthcare colleagues to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Now, as the leader of FLCCC, Varon is advocating against the vaccines. Varon's new focus has aligned him with President-elect Donald Trump and another prominent vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who may take the reins of HHS in the new Trump administrationopens in a new tab or window.
In fact, Varon and the FLCCC have partnered with Kennedy's group, Children's Health Defense, which is also known for anti-vaccine positions.
The report noted that Varon's about-face on vaccines fits into the context of his career in many ways, including his desire to push medical boundaries that exposed him to scrutiny by federal officials and healthcare regulators. Varon has been penalized by the Texas Medical Board twice and he has been accused of Medicare fraud and allowing unqualified medical students to work with him without proper supervision.
The Chronicle detailed numerous other allegations of misconduct by Varon throughout his career as well, including accusations that he performed medically unnecessary treatments that were billed to Medicare. Varon and his attorney have denied any wrongdoing, and they maintain that Varon had nothing to do with fraudulent Medicare billing practices.
A recent New York Timesopens in a new tab or window story described a new fad: "microdosing" GLP-1 anti-obesity drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound). I was asked to discuss the topicopens in a new tab or window on CBS News recently, which gave me a chance to look into this topic more deeply. I'd like to share my read on this with you.
The Short Answer
There's no evidence that microdosing -- taking very small doses of a GLP-1 in hopes of harnessing the benefits without the side effects -- will work for most people. There's a chance that lower-than-standard doses might help a subset of patients, but if true, it's likely that the doses would be among the lower doses already tested by the drug companies; that is, lower doses but not truly "micro" doses.
Keep in mind, low doses (4-5% of the eventual highest doses now used) failed to show benefits in early trials. However, it's worth saying that low (but not "micro") doses could help a select few people who have unusually strong responses to these drugs. Yet, it seems like the microdoses people are taking as part of this fad are a small fraction of even the lowest doses that the drug companies already tested carefully in the last decade.
To understand why, let's go Inside Medicine!
The Fad
The New York Times story described patients using alternative sources for these drugs (telehealth companies) who used compounding pharmacies to prepare much smaller doses than the branded options marketed by the drug companies. All of the blockbuster drugs have standard doses and standardized dose escalation regimens during the "initiation" phase of treatment. The article did not specify what counts as microdosing, but one mentioned dose was 0.05 mg (one-fifth of the 0.25 mg starting dose for Wegovy), which corresponds to 2% of the final 2.4 mg milligram dose that patients progress to after 5 months.
So, "microdoses" apparently refer to much smaller amounts. We're talking about 10- or even 100-fold dilutions compared to doses known to work. At some point, the concentration of a compound gets so small that it ceases to be anything, really. For reference, if someone ingested 2% of the lethal dose of cyanide, there's a good chance that the clinical effect would be nil.
The New York Times article went on to describe some patient anecdotes indicating that microdosing a GLP-1 had "worked" for them, praising the approach. One patient -- who couldn't tolerate the side effects of the standard doses -- concluded that the microdose approach was better than abandoning the drug altogether.
What's Probably Happening: Placebo Effects
Hearing that some people believe microdosing GLP-1s has helped them is just not going to cut it. We have to consider the placebo effect. In all of the blinded clinical trials that studied GLP-1s versus placebo, volunteers injecting placebo (not knowing whether they were injecting drug or placebo), lost weight early in the trials. The placebo effect is a well-described phenomenon, but it never ceases to amaze me. The placebo effect is even stronger if you think you're getting a drug (like a microdose).
Take a look at data from a tirzepatide studyopens in a new tab or window published in the New England Journal of Medicine. People who got placebo lost a bit of weight for a few months. They kept it off during the study, but eventually stopped making progress. Meanwhile, people on low-dose tirzepatide (5 mg) lost weight, but not nearly as much as those on 10 mg and 15 mg, who were still losing weight at the end of the 72-week study.
Jastreboff et al. New England Journal of Medicine. Annotation/edits: Inside Medicine.
Many other similar high-quality studies echo this. So, people injecting tiny doses of a GLP-1 are likely subject to the same effects that the placebo recipients in these studies experienced.
Smaller Doses Have Been Studied -- They Act Like Placebo
None of that says what would happen if some smaller dose had been used in a clinical trial, such as 1 mg of tirzepatide (40% of its standard starting dose and 6.7% of the full dose) or 0.1 mg of semaglutide (40% of its standard starting dose and 4.2% of the full dose).
But lower doses like these have been studied. And from those studies, it looks like microdosing -- these low doses, and even lower "microdoses" -- merely replicates the placebo effects seen in all the clinical trials.
The data from the semaglutide dosing study belowopens in a new tab or window show how much weight volunteers lost, divided by what dose they received, ranging from placebo (far left) to 1.6 mg of semaglutide (far right). For context, today, the maximum semaglutide dose for the anti-obesity indication is 2.4 mg.
Nauck et al. Diabetes Care. Edits/annotations: Inside Medicine.
As you can see, those on placebo or the three smallest doses of semaglutide lost between 0.8 kg and 2.0 kg during the 12-week study with no statistically significant differences across these groups. But patients who received 0.8 mg (with or without dose escalation) or 1.6 mg of semaglutide lost between 3.4 and 4.8 kg (around 4-5% of their initial weight) in that time.
It only took a couple of weeks for the 0.8 and 1.6 mg recipients to pull ahead of the low-dose and placebo groups, though the placebo effect tapered off after around 5 weeks. Meanwhile, the 1.6 mg recipient group kept losing weight through week 12. So, we can safely say that in this study, very low doses of semaglutide did no better than placebo. And these low doses are not even microdoses; they are likely much stronger. Again, what constitutes microdosing in the anecdotal reports in the New YorkTimes story was not specified. But the doses are probably a lot smaller than even the low doses that were tested in the study above.
We see this over and over in the trials. The placebo effect works early, and tapers off. Meanwhile, we see dose-response relationships for the drugs themselves (in this case, a tirzepatide trialopens in a new tab or window). Somewhat lower doses (5 mg) worked for some, but not as well as higher doses. Remember, if you keep lowering the dose, at some point what you're injecting is no better than placebo. That's what phase II clinical studies are all about: finding doses that are high enough to work, but not so high that their side effects are intolerable or unsafe.
Side Effects Are Lower With Lower Doses (Thank You, Captain Obvious)
Not surprisingly, in the studies, the rate of side effects was lower in those who received smaller doses of the active drugs. The data showed dose-response relationships for both the benefits and the side effects (i.e., the higher the dose, the higher the efficacy and the greater the rate of bothersome side effects). For example, in the tirzepatide study mentioned, 1.7% of placebo recipients reported vomiting compared to 8.3% of those taking 5 mg doses, 10.7% of those taking 10 mg doses, and 12.2% taking 15 mg doses.
In the aforementioned semaglutide dosing study, adverse events (side effects) occurred in 43.5% of placebo recipients (the so-called "nocebo" effect wherein people taking placebo still report side effects). From there, generally speaking, the higher the semaglutide dose, the more frequent side effects were. (Note: recipients of 0.8 mg doses had lower side effect rates when doses were slowly escalated over weeks, rather than going from nothing to 0.8 mg all at once).
Data: Nauck et al. Image: Inside Medicine
What if One-Size-Fits-All Dosing Isn't the Only Way?
Despite all of this, I'm sympathetic to the idea that a one-size-fits-all approach to dosing is not optimal. Indeed, I recently wrote aboutopens in a new tab or window the fact that clinicians should be open to tweaking dose quantity and scheduling based on individual patients' responses, rather than just monolithically concluding that a patient having nasty side effects in the dose escalation phase should just give up on the medications entirely. But the notion of microdosing working -- that is, getting the benefits without the side effects -- is half-baked and untested at best. (At worst, we can say that low doses have been tested and failed. That said, maybe for extremely sensitive responders, a new dosing study is worth doing.)
Could dose changes help some people? Possibly. The way to find out would be to enroll patients who started taking standard GLP-1 dosing regimens but had to stop because the side effects were too burdensome. I'd love to see a dosing trial of patients like this, perhaps looking at smaller initiation doses, or spreading the doses out differently, either by less frequent dosing, or more frequent but lower doses that still get to the same eventual pharmacologic levels. What's happening now -- practitioners prescribing tiny little doses of GLP-1s without any human data to support the practice -- is human experimentation that should make us uncomfortable.
What's the Harm?
The main harm of microdosing, as I told CBS News, is the faulty belief that a patient may be taking a drug when, in fact, for all practical purposes, they are not. Imagine planning an overseas trip that requires a typhoid vaccine. If you received some tiny dose, you might think you'd gotten the necessary protection, and proceed to behave accordingly. That could be harmful. GLP-1s don't just curb obesity, they lower diabetes rates and even mortality in heart disease patients.
Bottom line: Microdosing sounds like a nice idea for a class of drugs with common side effects during the initiation/dose escalation phase of treatment. But, at the moment, the state of the research on microdosing GLP-1s would best be described as fan fiction. The pharmaceutical companies that developed these drugs spent years working out the eventual FDA-approved doses of their active ingredients (semaglutide for Ozempic and Wegovy; tirzepatide for Mounjaro and Zepbound). It's not likely that lower doses that failed back then (let alone even smaller "microdoses") would suddenly start working for many people now.
Jeremy Faust is editor-in-chief of MedPage Today, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and a public health researcher. He is author of the Substack column Inside Medicine.
Two days ago, when China reported another month of dismal import and export activity, with both missing estimates...
... we reminded readers that at a time when China is scrambling - and failing - to convince the world that it will unleash a historic fiscal and monetary stimulus (just not right now, and not tomorrow, but maybe some time next year so start buying Chinese stonks or something), it will also have to devalue the yuan if it hopes to actually kickstart its mercantlist economy.
Turns out we were right once again because just under a decade since China's infamous 2015 yuan devaluation, Beijing is getting ready for round two.
According to Reuters, Beijing policymakers are mulling letting the yuan depreciate, possibly to around 7.5 per dollar, in response to the threat of a trade war with the US.
Letting the yuan , depreciate could make Chinese exports cheaper, blunting the impact of tariffs, and creating looser monetary settings in mainland China.
Reuters spoke to three people who have knowledge of the discussions about letting the yuan depreciate but requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Following the news, which had been rumored both here and elsewhere in recent weeks, the China’s yuan slid the most in a week, while regional peers also slumped, with the New Zealand dollar falling to the weakest in more than two years, while the Australian dollar hit levels last seen in November last year.
Pressure on the yuan had intensified since the re-election of Donald Trump, who has threatened to impose tariffs on China and other countries, and many investors have already speculated Beijing will abandon its current policy of maintaining a stable currency to compensate for any impact this could have on its economy.
“There is a compelling logic embedded in these comments,” said Jane Foley, head of FX strategy at Rabobank in London. “China’s economy is already weak, inflation is low, and it will have to position itself for Trump tariffs.”
Of course, a yuan devaluation will carry huge costs. A rapid depreciation could lead to aggressive capital outflows, triggering even more currency declines, and a surge in bitcion similar to the one observed in 2016 when, in response to China's 2015 devaluation, the crypto currency saw its first dramatic explosion higher and has never looked back. The downward spiral tends to dent appetite for China stocks and bonds, risks destabilizing financial markets and hurting growth, while sending gold and bitcoin to new all time highs.
On the other hand, it's not like mercantilist China, whose economy was and remains entirely dependent on exports, has much of a chance. The world’s second largest economy has long been hammered by a prolonged property crisis and souring consumer sentiment. To rejuvenate growth, China earlier this week signaled bolder economic support next year, embracing a “moderately loose” monetary policy and pledging “more proactive” fiscal policy.
The yawning yield gap between Chinese sovereign bonds and Treasuries is also putting pressure on the yuan. China’s 10-year benchmark yield fell to a fresh record low this week, below 1.9%, amid bets on more interest-rate cuts from the PBOC.
Even before the Retuers report, strategists at BNP Paribas saw the yuan falling to 7.45 by the end of 2025, according to a note this week, while Nomura said this month the currency can drop to 7.6 in offshore trading by May. Similarly, JPMorgan expects the offshore yuan to weaken to 7.5 in the second quarter.
“For any macro trader, this is a case of when and by how much yuan weakens in the first half of next year — and not so much if,” said Viraj Patel, strategist at Vanda Research in London. “When Chinese authorities start ‘mulling’ things over, we all know what comes next.”
Still, economists including Karsten Junius, chief economist at Bank J Safra Sarasin, said that it was “too early” for China to step into the market to weaken the yuan before the US announces any trade restrictions.
The Reuters report also refocused trader attention on China’s daily reference rate for the managed currency — Beijing’s preferred tool to guide yuan expectations. That’s the gauge around which the yuan is allowed to trade in a 2% range.
The PBOC has consistently set the so-called fixing stronger than 7.2 since the US election, despite wild swings in the greenback and increasing predictions by analysts that the central bank would buckle. Allowing a breach risks sending a signal to traders that the PBOC is comfortable with further yuan weakness, while holding the line suggests it may dig in for a fight.
“A moderate depreciation is an increasingly likely scenario as long as the move is not excessive versus non-greenback currencies,” said Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis. “However, the market should still be wary of sudden intervention if the move is too big within a short period of time.”
Khoon Goh, head of Asia Research at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, said that while authorities in Beijing may be open to allowing the yuan to be flexible, they may not want a premature over-reaction based on speculation.
This will not be the first time that policymakers face the question of whether to prioritize currency stability or boost exports. During the last China-US trade war under Trump’s first administration, Beijing allowed the yuan to weaken past the psychological milestone of 7 for the first time since the global financial crisis.
Of course, it all started in August 2015, when amid a collapse in exports, Beijing devalued the yuan in a shocking move to aid growth and reform its foreign-exchange market. That quickly backfired with capital outflows surging, prompting the central bank to burn through its reserves to stabilize the currency, and also sparked the first big move higher in bitcoin, as we observed at the time.
This time, Beijing would be mindful of creating too much weakness and volatility in the currency at a time when it wants to increase the yuan’s reserve status, said Foley at Rabobank. “The authorities would be looking for some equilibrium between these factors.”
And sure enough, news of a potentially weaker yuan triggered a knee-jerk risk-off reaction across markets, from FX to commodities. European stocks also fell in early trade, with energy and miners among the worst performers, although once the US tech bubble got running much of this initial skepticism was promptly forgotten. Oil prices trimmed gains as a depreciating yuan raises concerns about China’s ability to sustain crude demand that’s already weak, given the likely added cost of oil imports priced in dollars. Copper and gold also fell but have since recovered. Meanwhile, the euro also dropped, indicating traders may be developing the Trump trade into a tariff-risk hedging trade. The dollar gained.
America’s government-run school system is failing...
In a memorable April 1995 video, Apple founder Steve Jobs declared, “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible….”
Then in January 2006, John Stossel’s eye-opening documentary, Stupid in America, was aired.
The investigative ABC show was billed as“a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America’s public schools, and it’s about time we face up to it…The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic, and South Korea…This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.”
Sadly, since Jobs’ comments and Stossel’s documentary, public school performance has not improved.
The 2023 test, the results of which were released on December 4, revealed that average U.S. math scores declined sharply between 2019 and 2023, falling 18 points for 4th graders and 27 points for 8th graders. Internationally, this puts the U.S., a purported world leader, at 22nd of 63 education systems for 4th-grade math and 20th of 45 education systems for 8th-grade math.
Additionally, average U.S. math scores for both 4th and 8th graders reverted to performance levels of 1995, the first year the TIMSS assessment was administered, meaning any progress made since Steve Jobs’ damning comments has been erased.
Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner, summed up the dreary results, asserting that the phenomenon is particularly troubling because the U.S. is an outlier compared to other countries. She added that among 29 education systems that participated in both the 2011 and 2019 iterations of TIMSS, the U.S. was the only one that saw widening score gaps between top- and bottom-scoring students in both subjects and both grade levels.
Sadly, many parents are fooled by their kids’ lack of knowledge as teachers frequently resort to grade inflation. In fact, a recent study from the Equitable Grading Project of about 33,000 middle school and high school grades found that almost 60% of students’ grades did not match their course knowledge according to standardized tests. The mismatches were highest among Black and Hispanic students and those from families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Those with a vested interest in government-run schools invariably blame underfunding for abysmal education results.
But reality tells a different story.
According to Just Facts, which is dedicated to researching verifiable data about public policy issues, the U.S. spent $1.2 trillion on education in 2022. The bulk of the outlay, $834 billion, went to elementary and secondary education, while $226 billion was disbursed to higher education, and $121 billion went to libraries and other forms of education.
This total breaks down to $8,993 for every household in the U.S., 4.6% of the U.S. gross domestic product, and 14% of the government’s current expenditures. It’s important to note that these figures don’t include land purchases for schools and other facilities, as well as some of the costs of durable items like buildings and computers. The unfunded liabilities of post-employment non-pension benefits (like health insurance) are also not included.
Just Facts also finds that “the average inflation-adjusted cost of private K–12 schools in the 2019–20 school year was $9,709 per student. In contrast, the cost for public schools was $17,013 per student—or 75% more than private schools.”
What can we do about this deplorable state of affairs?
“Dismantling the Department of Education won’t make any measurable difference in educational outcomes,” writes Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“If you want real transformation, fight the elected school boards, defang the unions, and create alternatives to the ed schools.”
Petrill is correct, but more than anything, parents need to take charge. If your state has a private choice program, see if there is a school that is a better fit for your child. Or maybe there is a high-performing local charter school that does a better job than your zip code-mandated public school.
Another option for parents is to provide education for their kids in the same way they provide food, clothing, and shelter, and indeed, homeschooling rates continue to rise. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, declares that there are currently about 3.2 million students educated at home in grades K-12 in the U.S. (roughly 6% of school-age children), compared to 2.5 million in spring 2019.
Too many children are educationally shortchanged these days, and to turn things around, we must stop looking to the government—especially where its employees are unionized—for solutions.
The US government is scrambling to address a Turkish-backed offensive targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Turkish officials have announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Ankara on Friday. A statement from the State Department indicated that Blinken will discuss the importance of ensuring that the transition process and the formation of a new government in Syria respect the rights of minorities and prevent Syria from being used as a base for terrorism.
Washington was reportedly caught off guard by the rapid overthrow of Assad by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-aligned forces, which occurred in just 11 days. Reports suggest that US officials had been attempting to negotiate a deal with Assad that would have normalized his position in exchange for severing ties with Hezbollah and Iran.
The US has expressed concern over Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) operations targeting the SDF, a US partner force.
Buffer zone
These operations have resulted in the seizure of areas including Tal Rifaat and Manbij, which had been under SDF control earlier this month. By securing Tal Rifaat and Manbij, Turkey has solidified its control over key areas west of the Euphrates, creating a buffer zone along its borders.
Following the capture of Manbij, the SNA crossed the Euphrates River and seized the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, a site of significant historical and cultural importance linked to the Ottoman Empire. The move triggered an outrcy from the SDF, raising concerns that the front would move towards the heavily populated city of Kobane.
Turkey has long regarded the SDF as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), despite its rebranding and its partnership with the US in the fight against the Islamic State (IS).
A Turkish official told Middle East Eye that Blinken was probably coming to ensure that the SNA wouldn't progress towards Kobane or Ayn al Arab, as known in Arabic. "Turkey will maintain military pressure because some officials in the US are facilitating talks between the SDF and Israel in a last-minute attempt to secure the group's future," a person familiar with the issue told MEE.
Raised eyebrows
Israeli public broadcaster Kann last week revealed that the first official talks between Tel Aviv and the SDF leadership took place earlier this month. This development has raised eyebrows, as senior Israeli officials have begun adopting rhetoric supportive of the Syrian Kurdish group.
Meanwhile, US Central Command (Centcom) Commander General Michael Kurilla visited northeastern Syria on Tuesday, reiterating US support for the SDF as an anti-IS partner force.
Murat Yesiltas, a senior expert at the Ankara-based think tank Seta, argues that Ankara aims to strengthen its position during Donald Trump’s term by undermining the SDF as much as possible. Trump had repeatedly voiced his intention to withdraw US forces from Syria during his first term, but pressure from the Pentagon and a US media campaign limited his efforts, resulting in only a partial pullback in 2019.
Yesiltas told MEE he does not believe Ankara will escalate the situation by launching a major operation in areas such as Kobane or Qamishli, which are heavily populated with civilians. “However, there is a sense that the Americans are seeking a grand bargain to resolve the SDF issue,” Yesiltas said. “But Blinken and others only have one month left in office, so any deal must be negotiated with the incoming Trump administration. The new Syria increasingly appears united, and autonomy for a few million people in the country seems unlikely.”
A separate source familiar with the situation noted that the threat posed by SDF-controlled areas is higher than ever, despite the loss of Manbij and Tal Rifaat.
"The Syrian regime previously maintained a civil and military presence in areas like Hasakah and Qamishli, but they are no longer there. This absence provides the SDF with an opportunity to resemble a state more than ever before," the source said.
Today a lot of shelling and bombing by #SNA and #Turkey ◾️2 villages close to Til Temir ◾️vicinity and city of Raqqa ◾️vehicles and mosque close to Qere Qozaq ◾️3 villages close to #Kobane ◾️Lafarge company south of Kobane have been hit, probably more (not yet confirmed). pic.twitter.com/l5tOQW4UaH
Recent footage from last week shows that many residents in predominantly Arab areas such as Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor are growing intolerant of SDF rule, particularly now that the threat of Assad’s return has diminished.
Internal strife
Many in Ankara anticipate that the SDF will continue to face internal strife in Arab-majority areas. Yesiltas also highlighted immediate issues that Turkey wants to discuss with Blinken, including the transition process in Damascus.
"Turkey could play a key role in assisting the international community with the removal of Syria’s remaining chemical weapons," Yesiltas added. "Although Israel has reportedly targeted some research facilities and sites, these types of attacks alone are not sufficient to fully eliminate them."
The State Department confirmed that Blinken will also address efforts to ensure that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles are secured and safely destroyed.
Phase 2b/3 trial of izokibep did not meet primary endpoint; secondary endpoints also did not achieve statistical significance
Company continues focus on development of subcutaneous lonigutamab in thyroid eye disease, with initiation of Phase 3 program on schedule for Q1 2025
$562.4 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities on September 30, 2024 projected to provide runway to mid-2027, including completion of planned Phase 3 trials and BLA-enabling activities for lonigutamab as well as selective pipeline expansion
Veeva Systems (NYSE:VEEV), a cloud-based software provider for the science and healthcare industries, faces increasing competition from Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), according to Morgan Stanley.
"Salesforce is a credible threat in CRM, posing risk of share loss in 25%-30% of Veeva's business and weighing on the stock's multiple," said Morgan Stanley analysts, led by Craig Hettenbach.
Salesforce showcased its new offering Agentforce earlier this month at Dreamforce. Agentforce's artificial intelligence agents demonstrated use cases in an array of industries, including health care and the sciences.
"System integrators had a notable presence at Dreamforce, leading to increased conjecture that top 20 global pharma companies are looking to issue RFPs for Life Sciences CRM," Hettenbech noted.
However, Veeva has a reputation as a high-quality company and holds a leadership role in the Live Sciences vertical. It also invests about 50% of its revenue into research and development projects. And the balance sheet shows no debt and $5B in cash.
However, its lack of an AI narrative compared to other software companies has raised concerns among some investors, according to Morgan Stanley.
Morgan Stanley rates Veeva at Underweight with a price target of $173, which is well below its current value of $211.
Veeva has a Strong Buy rating from Seeking Alpha analysts and a Buy rating from Wall Street analysts. It has a Hold rating from Seeking Alpha's Quant system.
