Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) is possibly approaching a major achievement in its business, so we would like to shine some light on the company. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. discovers, develops, and commercializes therapeutics based on ribonucleic acid interference. The US$33b market-cap company posted a loss in its most recent financial year of US$278m and a latest trailing-twelve-month loss of US$270m shrinking the gap between loss and breakeven. The most pressing concern for investors is Alnylam Pharmaceuticals' path to profitability – when will it breakeven? We've put together a brief outline of industry analyst expectations for the company, its year of breakeven and its implied growth rate.

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Consensus from 31 of the American Biotechs analysts is that Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is on the verge of breakeven. They anticipate the company to incur a final loss in 2025, before generating positive profits of US$169m in 2026. So, the company is predicted to breakeven just over a year from today. What rate will the company have to grow year-on-year in order to breakeven on this date? Using a line of best fit, we calculated an average annual growth rate of 61%, which is extremely buoyant. If this rate turns out to be too aggressive, the company may become profitable much later than analysts predict.

Underlying developments driving Alnylam Pharmaceuticals' growth isn’t the focus of this broad overview, but, bear in mind that by and large a biotech has lumpy cash flows which are contingent on the product type and stage of development the company is in. So, a high growth rate is not out of the ordinary, particularly when a company is in a period of investment.

Check out our latest analysis for Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

One thing we would like to bring into light with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is its debt-to-equity ratio of over 2x. Generally, the rule of thumb is debt shouldn’t exceed 40% of your equity, and the company has considerably exceeded this. A higher level of debt requires more stringent capital management which increases the risk around investing in the loss-making company.

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There are key fundamentals of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals which are not covered in this article, but we must stress again that this is merely a basic overview. For a more comprehensive look at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, take a look at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals' company page on Simply Wall St. We've also compiled a list of essential aspects you should further examine: