Humira maintained its blockbuster status and market share dominance in the first quarter of 2024, but experienced a drop in sales as biosimilar competition heated up, AbbVie reported on Friday.
AbbVie on Friday beat Wall Street expectations in its first quarter of 2024, thanks in part to robust sales of its immunology drugs Rinvoq and Skyrizi, the company announced.
The company said it is raising its guidance for the full-year 2024 from $10.97 to $11.17 per share to $11.13 to $11.33 per share. AbbVie also reported net revenue of over $12.3 billion, a 0.7% increase compared to the first quarter of 2023.
Skyrizi’s worldwide revenue for Q1 was more than $2 billion, a 47% increase from the first quarter of last year and beating estimates of $1.94 billion. Rinvoq brought in $1.09 billion in global sales, a 59% increase from Q1 2023 and narrowly higher than expectations of $1.06 billion.
AbbVie’s immunology sector overall pulled in a total of $5.3 billion globally in Q1, representing a 3.9% decrease from last year. The company said the drop was due to biosimilar competition for its arthritis drug Humira, which posted global sales of $2.27 billion in the quarter, a 35% decrease from the same period last year and mostly in line with estimates of $2.28 billion.
Earlier this year, Humira maintained its dominance and only ceding 2% of its market share to competing biosimilars. However, the competition spiked this month as new prescriptions for Humira biosimilars increased by 36% after CVS Caremark removed AbbVie’s drug from its major formulations in favor of the biosimilars.
Nonetheless, William Blair analysts in a Friday note wrote that the company “has managed the erosion well” for Humira and while “some uncertainty remains” they contend “investors now have enough visibility to get comfortable with the strong growth outlook for AbbVie over the near and long term.”
AbbVie’s oncology drug Imbruvica, one of the first drugs named to the Medicare drug price negotiations last year, secured $838 million in Q1, a 4.5% drop from the same period last year but beating estimates of $744 million. Venclexta saw a 14% rise in global sales, pulling in $614 million, while Elahere, which secured full approval in March 2024, netted $64 million in the most recent quarter. Overall, the company’s oncology business reported $1.5 billion in global sales, a 9% increase from Q1 2023.
“We continue to demonstrate outstanding operational execution and delivered another quarter of strong results,” AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez said in a statement.
Tyler Patchen is a staff writer at BioSpace. You can reach him at tyler.patchen@biospace.com. Follow him on LinkedIn.
