Biogen is growing as planned, with marketed products generating more revenue and multiple late-stage readouts expected over the next year. Building out an early-stage pipeline would be a bonus, CEO Chris Viehbacher said on a Q3 earnings call Wednesday.
After three straight quarters of rising revenue thanks to existing products, Biogen now sees its carefully crafted late-stage pipeline as icing on the cake, with deals another nice to have but not necessary sprinkle on top.
“Given the Apellis acquisition, we now think that the company can grow even without the pipeline,” CEO Chris Viehbacher said on a Wednesday morning earnings call. “So as the pipeline starts to read out . . . we’ll be able to launch products on top of a growing base.”
Growth was certainly the topic du jour during Biogen’s third-quarter earnings report—with some variation of the word spoken 48 times on the call by the company executives or analysts eager to understand their strategy.
That growth was generated by increasing sales of Alzheimer’s disease therapy Leqembi and spinal muscular atrophy antisense oligonucleotide Spinraza, as well as the products Biogen acquired in its $5.6 billion Apellis Pharmaceuticals buy in March.
Now, the company is looking to three key pipeline products: litifilimab in two types of lupus, felzartamab in antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) and zorevunersen for Dravet syndrome. Biogen has key registrational readouts for litifilimab coming in the next four quarters: Two Phase 3 readouts in systemic lupus erythematosus are expected first, by the end of this year, followed by a late-stage readout in cutaneous lupus erythematosus in the first half of 2027.
With these trials poised to deliver data that could launch meaningful products, Viehbacher said the company will stay focused on developing internal programs while watching for potential early-stage business development opportunities.
“Investors have waited a long time for us to grow, and so we’re going to be very mindful of different ratios and the amount of investment versus growing our bottom line,” the CEO said. “But I think we can manage all of that actually.”
Apellis was a late-stage addition, adding two approved medicines in kidney and eye disease. Viehbacher reiterated his preference for earlier-stage acquisitions going forward.
“I’ve really always hated having to go buy assets in later stage because there’s still a fair amount of risk associated with that,” Viehbacher said. “If we have reasonable success with the pipeline—again we have to wait and see the results—but there’s a good potential that the company can just grow now for the foreseeable future.”
Viehbacher said that assets in the discovery stage to Phase 1b that can fit into Biogen’s existing franchises are the company’s “sweet spot” as they have become more opportunistic than intentional about deals.
“One of the things I’m quite mindful of is distraction. We have dramatically changed at Biogen,” Viehbacher said. While just a few years ago the company was pitching its therapies solely to neurologists, Biogen’s commercial teams are now working with nephrologists, dermatologists, retina specialists and rheumatologists across the product portfolio.
“All of that is a tremendous amount of change, and I think we really want to be able to digest that change and really take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us and be careful about overextending ourselves,” the CEO said.
