Shares in Vertex Pharmaceuticals jumped 6% Friday morning after the biotechnology company reported earnings that included stronger sales for its cell-based therapy Casgevy.
Vertex notched $12 billion in 2025, with about $3.2 billion coming in during the fourth quarter. Overall, sales were up 9% year-over-year.
Casgevy, Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics’ therapy for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia, brought in $54 million in the fourth quarter and $116 million last year, outstripping Wall Street expectations. Just a quarter prior, Vertex fell short of analysts’ estimates with sales of Casgevy totaling $17 million from July to September.
Adoption of the gene editing treatment ticked up across last year, as Vertex saw the number of patients who initiated the process of getting Casgevy nearly triple from 109 in 2024 to 301 in 2025.
The process of getting Casgevy can take nearly 12 months from start to infusion. Starting with a patient’s blood stem cells, Vertex uses CRISPR gene editing technology to help those cells produce fetal hemoglobin. That production can not only alleviate pain crises, but essentially cure patients of their disease. Yet, the chemotherapy conditioning required to prepare for those infusions can be debilitating and cause side effects such as infertility, which has turned off some potential patients.
According to Vertex’s earnings, 30 of the 64 patients who had their cells reinfused in 2025 received those infusions during the final three months of the year.
“Sales could continue to fluctuate quarter to quarter as the scheduling process for infusion is long and patients may wait to receive the final treatment during a preferred time” like the holidays, Tyler Van Buren, a TD Cowen analyst, wrote in a note to clients. Casgevy could possibly bring in $227 million in sales throughout 2026, he added, given the number of patients who have started cell collection.
Vertex expects that pace to “smooth out” by 2027, and is “very encouraged by the robust flow of patients,” Chief Operating Officer Duncan McKechnie said on an earnings call on Thursday afternoon.
The company received a priority voucher from the Food and Drug Administration to speed up review of Casgevy in patients aged 5 to 11, and said at a medical meeting in December it planned to ask for approval in the first half of 2026. Clearance would likely boost revenue from the gene editing treatment in the coming years.
Casgevy’s performance was part of a pair of “positive surprises,” Brian Abrahams of RBC Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients, alongside sales of a relatively new cystic fibrosis drug Alyftrek.
Vertex’s revenues are dominated by its arsenal of cystic fibrosis medications, with a little over $10 billion of the $12 billion made in 2025 coming from Trikafta and Kaftrio. The company expects the cystic fibrosis franchise to continue lifting its bottom line, aided, too, by the ramped up use of Casgevy and its new, non-opioid pain drug Journavx.
Vertex forecasts roughly $13 billion to 13.1 billion in revenue for this year, including $500 million or more from non-CF products.
Data readouts in the coming months for the company’s experimental kidney drugs povetacicept and inaxaplin are also top of mind for investors. Povetacicept, which is being studied in a late-stage trial to treat IgA nephropathy, could potentially be a major source of revenue. RBC previously estimated that, if approved, it should eventually bring at least $1.2 billion in annual sales.
