THIRD TEAM Geoffrey Porges Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Clients say Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s Geoffrey Porges, in third place for a fourth straight year, is “an independent thinker” who “isn’t afraid to break from the crowd.” Porges reiterated his outperform call on Vertex Pharmaceuticals in January, at $35.99, adding it to his Best of Bernstein list for the first quarter. In March — with shares of the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based outfit up 38.8 percent, to $49.95, and ahead of the sector by 36.7 percentage points — Porges pounded the table, on the belief that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would approve Vertex’s hepatitis C treatment, Incivek. He was right; the FDA approved the drug in May. Vertex’s stock price surged in the days following the announcement before starting to slip; it closed August at $45.27, for a loss of 9.4 percent that trailed the sector by 15.9 percentage points since the March reiteration — but it was still up 25.8 percent since the original call, putting it 17.1 percentage points ahead of the sector and 30 percentage points ahead of the broad market.