IMS Health Laid Low

"Pharmaceutical supply chain themes that were not historically deemed a highly correlated challenge for IMS's model -- such as brand-to-generics conversions, therapeutic reference pricing and lack of new product introductions -- now appear to be too great to refute."

Coldwell has therefore slashed his price target on IMS's stock from $37 to $24 a share. His firm hopes to secure investment banking business from the company in the future.

Other analysts quickly lowered their expectation for IMS as well.

John Kreger of William Blair, which owns at least 1% of IMS's stock itself, cut his rating on the company from outperform to market-perform on Thursday. Kreger, like many, seemed blindsided by this week's development.

"We are confused about what is really different about today's environment versus one, two or three years ago," Kreger admitted. "The pharma industry's revenue growth has been slowing since 2000 ... Yet IMS was able to deliver improving revenue growth and stabilizing margins despite this headwind?

"So why is this so different?"

For now, at least, Kreger has decided to blame the industry instead of the company itself. But others seemed unwilling to let management off the hook.

"With pharma's challenges unlikely to abate and given concerns that spending is further crimped in an election year," he wrote, "we see no signs of relief."

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