Sleep and dreams

News that Cephalon (CEPH) beat the third quarter consensus estimates by a more than robust $0.34 might have given the impression that analysts were asleep at the wheel. It's not every day that a company produces a 567% upside surprise.

Most of the upside came from wholesaler stockpiling of CEPH's Provigil modafinil narcolepsy drug in advance of an expected price increase. This left analysts in the unenviable position of ferreting out the true sales run rate for Provigil, a dubious task given that market watchers estimate that the product gets nearly three-quarters of its sales from off-label use in depression, schizophrenia and effective disorders...