Deutsche Bank hikes AstraZeneca target price despite rising rate environment

They conceded that an environment of rising interest rates would normally hardly be seen as auguring positively for a defensive sector to outperform.

But these weren't normal times, they said.

"[...] This being a geopolitically-challenged stagflationary-susceptible situation, normal perhaps doesn't apply and indeed pharma has had a strong relative start to the year that may well continue," they explained.

Large-capitalisation European Union pharmaceuticals had put on 5.0% since the start of the year in US dollar terms, against a 10.0% drop on the Stoxx 600.

In particular, within the sector, more highly-valued growth names such as AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk had been the standout outperformers, versus the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis or Sanofi.

Nonetheless, for now they saw no reason to shift their stance ahead of key and likely thesis-affirming DB04 data due to be published at the ASCO conference on 3-7 June.

On that note, they saw fit to raise their target price for AstraZeneca's shares from 10,500.0p to 11,500.0p.