Piper Jaffray analyst Joshua Schimmer lowered his price target for Gilead Sciences to $108 after the company reduced its revenue and raised its opex guidance for the year. The Hepatitis C virus franchise "struggled due to a variety of factors but a reserve adjustment and the HIV franchise saved the day to deliver in-line revenue," Schimmer tells investors in a post-earnings research note. The analyst views the "strong performance" of the TAF-based HIV therapeutics as meaningful for delivering more sustainable revenue. While admitting the outlook for the HCV franchise is "murky," Schimmer keeps an Overweight rating on Gilead.

Cantor Fitzgerald lowered the firm's price target on Gilead to $75 from $78 and keeps a Neutral rating on the shares. The firm, which made slight adjustments to all of its large-cap biotechnology models ahead of Q1 earnings season for the group, lowered its target for Gilead given slower expected HIV growth. The "usual seasonal headwinds that typically make this one of the weaker quarters for the industry," the analyst added in the preview note.