New Cholesterol drug falls short as sales driver for Amgen

Bloomberg

Amgen Inc.’s new cholesterol drug is still struggling to gain traction, missing analysts’ estimates at a time when the biotechnology giant is anxious for its newer drugs to make up for slowing sales of its older ones. Sales of the drug, called Repatha, in the first quarter were $49 million, the company said in a statement. That was far short of the $71.6 million average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Sales of Amgen’s top drug, the arthritis treatment Enbrel, fell 15 percent from a year ago and were short of analysts’ expectations. Enbrel was hurt by lower demand, according to an Amgen slide presentation. The drug is the Thousand Oaks, California-based company’s biggest and made up more than a quarter of its sales last year.
“Enbrel is a good example of why Amgen needs to show where they’re going to drive growth,” said Tony Scherrer, director of research at Smead Capital Management, a shareholder with $2.1 billion under management. “They’ve done fantastically well off Enbrel, but this data point shows why they need to refresh the portfolio.”
Amgen shares fell 3.1 percent to $159.55 after the markets closed in New York. Repatha has had a rocky start. Earlier this year, the drug was shown to reduce a broad range of heart complications, but disappointed investors because it didn’t benefit patients as much as hoped. With a list price of $14,000 a year, it has faced pushback from insurers who have limited access for patients.
Sales in the first quarter failed to grow from the quarter before, partly because of a one-time sale to the Middle East that wasn’t repeated, said Tony Hooper, Amgen’s executive vice president of global commercial operations. In US and Europe, however, Repatha prescriptions grew 14 percent and 28 percent, respectively, from fourth quarter, Hooper said.