AbbVie barely beat Wall Street forecasts on sales of its mainstay medicine Humira, failing to allay investors’ concerns over the future of the cash cow product and sending the drugmaker’s shares down 5 percent on Friday.
Humira is the world’s best-selling prescription medicine and accounts for some two-thirds of AbbVie’s overall revenue. But the drug faces possible competition from cheaper biosimilar versions, which could grab a big chunk of AbbVie’s business and compel the North Chicago, Illinois company to slash prices.
Besides the threat of competition, AbbVie also faces questions on its future plans related to policy changes under the Donald Trump administration aimed at tackling soaring healthcare costs.
“There’s a lot of skepticism, concerns about rebates and biosimilars. Some of that is quite reasonable,” Chief Executive Officer Richard Gonzalez told analysts on a conference call. “(But) every year since I can remember, there has been fretting about Humira.”
The rheumatoid arthritis medicine made $5.19 billion in sales in the second quarter of 2018. Six analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S had on average expected $5.18 billion.
Concerns about Humira’s future are likely to increase in the second half of the year, despite AbbVie’s solid quarterly results, Credit Suisse analyst Vamil Divan said in a report.
AbbVie has aggressively tried to fend off any competition from other drugmakers looking to make cheaper copies of Humira. It has signed agreements with rivals including Mylan to keep them from launching any Humira copies in the United States until 2023.
To lower its dependence on Humira, AbbVie is also pushing to grow sales from its other drugs, including cancer treatment Imbruvica, which raked in second-quarter sales of $850 million, exceeding analysts’ estimates of $827.2 million.
AbbVie now expects 2018 adjusted earnings of between $7.76 and $7.86 per share, compared with an earlier expectation of between $7.66 and $7.76.
Excluding one-time items, AbbVie earned $2 per share, edging past analysts’ expectations of $1.97. Net earnings rose 3.6 percent to $1.98 billion or $1.26 per share.
Revenue rose about 19 percent to $8.28 billion. Analysts had expected $8.21 billion.
AbbVie shares were down 4 percent at $90.04 on Friday morning.
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