As my colleague Brendan Conway has noted today, biotech stocks continue to fall today.
Reuters Shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) have fallen 4.4% to $323.62 at 3:23 p.m., while Biogen (BIIB) has dropped 4% to $327.04 and Gilead Sciences (GILD) has dipped 0.4% to $79.58. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology Index ETF (IBB), meanwhile, has dropped 0.9% to $258.85 and the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) has declined 0.6% to $160.69. Suffice it to say, biotech investors don’t appear to be enjoying zero-G nearly as much as Kate Upton.
Amidst the selling, however, reports have emerged that Gilead’s sales of Sovaldi continue to look, well, impressive. Citigroup’s Yaron Werber explains:
Sovaldi is tracking at $943M for the first twelve weeks of launch and could post $8.76B in sales for 2014 and $1.59B for Q1:14 vs. Citi $516M and Consensus $903M, if Sovaldi scrips continue at same level as the recent week without any growth. We anticipate that Sovaldi could materially exceed our and consensus ests and believe that posting >$5B in total sales in FY14 is possible. In the twelfth week of launch, Sovaldi's weekly TRx were 6,398. While this is only the twelfth week, it is still much ahead of protease inhibitor Incivek' launch which had 1,928 TRx in the twelfth week of launch.
Still, after yesterday’s 3.6% drop, today’s small decline relative to the ETFs has to be considered progress.
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