SECOND TEAM Christopher Schott J.P. Morgan
Christopher Schott, who spent the past two years in the runner-up position, leaps to second place. The J.P. Morgan analyst highlighted his overweight recommendation on Pfizer in December, deeming the shares undervalued at $16.58, and pounded the table in February, March and April. Schott believed that investors were overreacting to Pfizer’s loss this year of the patent on its cholesterol drug Lipitor, which has generated about $10 billion a year in sales for the New York–based company; he noted that Pfizer has several products in late-stage development and other methods, including the sale of noncore assets, to bolster its bottom line. In July the company announced potential plans to spin off its animal health and infant nutrition units so that it could focus on new pharmaceuticals, including the blood thinner apixaban, lung cancer drug crizotinib and arthritis treatment tofacitinib. The stock rose as high as $21.21 in late May before tumbling with the rest of the market, to end August at $18.98 — for a gain of 14.5 percent that outpaced the sector by 9.3 percentage points.