The drugmaker is one of the stock market’s ugly toads today, thanks to a downgrade by a Wall Street analyst who cites a delay in approval for its Gardasil vaccine for adult women until late next year. And recent sales trends for the HPV vaccine, writes UBS analyst Roopesh Patel, “don’t look encouraging.”

To be specific, IMS health data for April and May signal second-quarter Gardasil sales at about $300 million, which means Gardasil revenue would be flat quarter to quarter, and well below his previous estimate of $380 million. Of course, other recent setbacks - the FDA rejection of the Cordaptive cholesterol pill, the protracted slump in Vytorin and Zetia prescriptions and ongoing manufacturing problems affecting supplies of other vaccines - contributed to his downgrade.

“A near-term focus on Gardasil is relevant because, for the past two quarters, Gardasil sales have fallen short of expectations, and the company has explained that away as ’seasonality’ related,” he writes. “The anticipation is that (the second quarter) should be a seasonally stronger quarter. Therefore, if sales are sequentially flat (US sales were $293 million in the first quarter), we believe this will be viewed with disappointment.”

Patesh notes that Merck has cautioned against using IMS data to forecast Gardasil sales, which he writes is “understandable, given that a majority of sales are made direct to physicians and the vaccines for children program and, therefore, not comprehensively captured by usual channels audited by IMS. Still, he finds IMS has done a sufficiently better job of capturing sales over the past year to use the data to base his predictions.

Meanwhile, Merck continues to encounter resistance to Gardasil from conservative groups, such as Judicial Watch, which last week issued its latest tally on the number of deaths and side effects reported in connection with the use of the vaccine. Merck, which promotes Gardasil with the ‘One Less’ ad campaign, has noted that such reports don’t prove causation, but the negative publicity remains a hindrance to wider acceptance.