Hit with lower sales of its COVID-19 antiviral Veklury and the weak performance of its HIV franchise, Gilead Sciences reported a 4% year-over-year revenue loss in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Pictured: Gilead signage at its office in California/iStock, Sundry Photography
Gilead suffered a 4% year-over-year revenue drop during the fourth quarter of 2023, driven mainly by weaker sales from its COVID-19 and HIV businesses, the company reported Tuesday during its quarterly and full-year earnings report.
Veklury (remdesivir), Gilead’s intravenous antiviral coronavirus treatment, only brought in $720 million during the fourth quarter, representing a 28% decline from its $1 billion revenue during the same period the prior year. The company’s HIV franchise also took a sales hit, dropping 2% from $4.77 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 to $4.69 billion in the most recent quarter.
Gilead also reported a 21% decline in royalty, contract and other revenues during the fourth quarter of 2023.
The growth of Gilead’s oncology business—the sales of which jumped 24% year-over-year from $614 million to $765 million—was not enough to offset the decline of its other franchises. Overall, the company’s total revenues reached a little more than $7.11 billion for the fourth quarter of 2023, down 4% from nearly $7.39 billion during the same period in 2022.
During its fourth-quarter report, Gilead also announced that the Phase III EVOKE-01 study of its breast cancer therapy Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy) missed its primary endpoint, failing to significantly improve overall survival versus docetaxel in previously treated metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Gilead also failed the Phase III OAKTREE study of its investigational antiviral drug obeldesivir in non-hospitalized patients who are not at risk of developing severe COVID-19. Obeldesivir was well-tolerated but did not significantly improve the time to symptom alleviation.
Gilead’s shares dipped 3% in post-market trading on Tuesday in response to its fourth-quarter performance, according to Seeking Alpha.
Despite the disappointing performance, Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day took an optimistic tone during the investor call, highlighting what he called the “consistent growth in our base business” and setting the company up for growth into 2024.
“This is a catalyst-rich phase for Gilead, with more than 20 updates this year and many more to come beyond 2024,” O’Day said.
These updates include clinical readouts from the Phase III TROPiCS-04 study of Trodelvy in second-line metastatic urothelial carcinoma and the Phase II EVOKE-02 study in first-line metastatic NSCLC. Gilead is also set to provide updates on its Phase III PURPOSE 1 study assessing lenacapavir as pre-exposure prophylaxis in HIV.
With these and other milestones in 2024, Gilead expects to hit total product sales between $27.1 billion and $27.5 billion.
Tristan Manalac is an independent science writer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Reach out to him on LinkedIn or email him at tristan@tristanmanalac.com or tristan.manalac@biospace.com.
