While Teva missed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter of 2024, it reported Wednesday a 5% increase in Q1 revenues while reporting that the company’s schizophrenia candidate scored a late-stage trial victory
Teva Pharmaceuticals missed analysts’ first-quarter 2024 profit expectations on Wednesday, while reporting a 5% increase in revenues in local currency terms. The company also provided late-stage results for its injectable schizophrenia candidate, which met the primary endpoint in a Phase III trial.
Teva netted 48 cents per share in Q1 2024, missing the analyst forecast of 51 cents per share, according to Seeking Alpha. Teva also reported a higher operating loss in the first quarter due to restructuring costs, asset impairments and increased expenses for its sales and marketing sector.
However, the company brought in revenues of $3.8 billion in Q1, a 5% bump from the same period last year. The increase was attributed to increased sales of its generic drug products and Huntington’s disease treatment Austedo. The company also saw positive sales from its migraine drug Ajovy in European and other international markets.
In the U.S., Austedo brought in $282 million in sales for the quarter, a 67% increase from Q1 2023, while Teva’s generics earned $808 million, marking an 8% increase from the same period last year. According to Teva, one of the hotter selling generics in the U.S. was the cancer treatment lenalidomide, which are generic versions of Bristol Myers Squibb’s Revlimid.
In Europe, generic products in Q1 generated for Teva over $1 billion in sales, an 8% bump from the same period last year, while Ajovy earned $51 million in the most recent quarter, a 42% increase from the same period in 2023.
The company is expanding its biosimilar offerings, as the FDA approved Teva and Alvotech’s Stelara biosimilar Selarsdi.
“In 2024 Teva is off to a good start, with global revenues of $3.8 billion showing growth of 5% in local currency terms compared to Q1 2023, fueled by robust growth in our generics business across all regions and continued growth of our innovative brands Austedo and Ajovy,” Teva CEO Richard Francis said in a statement.
Teva and its partner, the French pharma Medincell, also announced Wednesday that their asset TEV-‘749 reached the primary endpoint in a Phase III trial, dubbed Solaris. The drug is an injectable version of olanzapine intended to treat adults with schizophrenia.
According to Teva, the asset met the primary endpoint across all three dosing groups, reporting a mean difference in change in the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS). The total scores from the baseline to week eight were -9.71 points, -11.27 points, and -9.71 points in the high, medium, and low dosing groups, marking the drug as clinically meaningful and statistically significant in all groups and earning a p-value of 0.001 for each group.
The secondary endpoints of clinical global impressions-schizophrenia (CGI-S) and personal and social performance (PSP) scale scores were also statistically significant. Teva plans to unveil more efficacy and safety data later this year.
“These encouraging results from the efficacy portion of our Phase III Solaris trial demonstrate the potential of TEV-‘749 to be an effective long-acting treatment option for schizophrenia and further show our dedication to advancing innovative science in mental health and beyond,” Eric Hughes, chief medical officer at Teva, 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.
