Dive Brief:
- Shire had record sales during 2016, lifted by a strong fourth quarter that saw big upticks in legacy products and, most notably, hemophilia drugs acquired from taking over Baxalta.
- Product sales totaled almost $10.9 billion during fiscal year 2016 and $3.6 billion in the fourth quarter, up 78% and 123% from the same period a year prior.
- The Irish pharma expects total sales to grow as much as 36% in 2017, reaching $14.8 billion.
Dive Insight:
It's not uncommon for a drugmaker to see revenue spikes after acquiring new, marketable products, but that fact hadn't completely alleviated investors concerns that the Baxalta acquisition won't generate substantial enough cost-savings.
The $1.8 billion in Baxalta drugs sales during the fourth quarter seems to have alleviated such worries somewhat, however. Shire stock was up 4.5% to $182.13 per share in Thursday morning trading.
Baxalta's influence extended beyond new hematology drugs. The target company's immunology and oncology products, which include immunoglobin therapies as well as Oncaspar (pegaspargase) and Onivyde (irinotecan liposome injection), raked in $1.64 billion in combined sales for Shire. (Baxalata had rights to Onivyde outside of the U.S. and Taiwan.)
The company also commented on its recently approved treatment for dry eye, Xiidra. While the company said it only has access to about 65% of the dry eye market, it claimed Xiidra maintains 20% of that total market and 50% of the patients new to market. Those figures are expected to grow too, as the company has already filed the treatment for approval in Canada and plans an additional filing in Europe during the third quarter.
"We launched into a market with very low to no growth. We have dramatically increased the growth of the market," Shire CEO Flemming Ornskov. "We've activated a significant portion of new patients — we get most of our growth from new patients to market — and we see that as a long-term investment in developing the market, not only U.S. but ex-U.S. And I think our efforts are paying off.