October 23, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Celgene ’s stellar third quarter results have once again wowed Wall Street analysts, who said Thursday that they were pleasantly surprised by the company’s increasing earnings per share outlook, 19 percent boost in Revlimid sales and 18 percent revenue jump.
Summit, N.J.-based Celgene beat the consensus estimates, coming in at an adjusted per-share earnings outlook for the year to a range of $3.65 to $3.70, up from $3.60 to $3.65.
Much of Celgene’s boom rests on its blood cancer blockbuster Revlimid, but it also saw cancer treatment Abraxane climb 25.1 percent to $212.2 million for the third quarter. Newcomer arthritis treatment Otezla finally hit the market after a few failures at the FDA slowed its progress but weighed in with $508.5 million in profit for the quarter.
All of those number had analysts pleased that the company had outperformed estimates.
“Total revenue and EPS were a bit ahead of the Street and we are impressed with the pace of Revlimid growth driven largely by volume,” wroteJoshua Schimmer, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “While the quarter wasn’t a blow-out, we are comfortable that LT prospects for CELG remain strong. CELG appears to be well positioned to deliver sustainable mid-20 percent EPS growth for the foreseeable future.”
Calling the results “another fine quarter,” Schimmer added that new data presented this week for Celgene’s Crohn’s disease drug GED-0301 could give the firm an even higher boost in coming quarters.
“The data looks very impressive and is certainly in line with our high expectations. Remission rate in placebo arm (9.5 percent) seems to be low given the ‘wandering’ placebo effect in this disease,” wrote Schimmer in a note to investors.
However, that is is still in line with competitor Humira’s Phase III placebo data for adult patients with moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease, who have remission rate ranges from 7 percent to 12 percent.
“GED-0301 seems to be well tolerated with similar rates of AEs and sAEs across groups, though the safety profile of the drug needs to be further characterized in larger P3 trials,” said Schimmer. “Given GED-0301’s attractive efficacy and safety, in addition to its oral administration, we are increasingly confident that it could emerge as a transformative therapy for Crohn’s disease with blockbuster potential.”
Otezla, too, should also gain traction, said Bret Holley, a biotech analyst with Guggenheim Partners.
“We continue to believe psoriasis is the key market for Otezla, based on the drug’s superior dosing and comparable clinical profile vs. the anti--tumor necrosis factors in this setting. We expect fairly rapid Otezla adoption ahead of the anti-TNFs in psoriasis based on this profile. Additionally, we believe PsA will continue to be a solid Otezla indication, and CELG reported impressive new PsA patient start data on the third quarter call.”
