Dive Brief:
- Regeneron said Thursday revenue in the first quarter jumped 17% from the same period last year, even after U.S. regulators pulled their authorization for the company’s multibillion dollar COVID-19 treatment.
- Revenue rose to nearly $3 billion, compared to about $2.5 billion over the same period in 2021. Net income fell 13% to $974 million, from roughly $1.1 billion, as expenses rose for clinical manufacturing and increased hiring. Shares of the company dipped by as much as 3% in early trading.
- Partnerships and profit-sharing agreements with big European drugmakers helped drive revenue as Regeneron’s net product sales in the U.S. fell 5% in the period. Collaboration revenue rose to over $1.2 billion from $754 million a year earlier, helped by Dupixent, which Sanofi markets for inflammatory conditions including asthma and eczema.
Dive Insight:
The Tarrytown, New York-based biotech got a sudden windfall during the pandemic as it quickly developed and won U.S. clearance of REGEN-COV, an antibody treatment that former President Trump received when he had COVID-19 in 2020. In the fourth quarter of 2021, sales of the medicine brought in $2.3 billion as Regeneron wrapped up a supply contract with the U.S. government.
But the treatment that worked so well against the initial variants of COVID-19 failed with the arrival of omicron, which began to circulate throughout the U.S. near the end of last year. In January, the Food and Drug Administration said REGEN-COV should not be used in the U.S. while omicron is dominant.
As a result, Regeneron recorded no U.S. sales for REGEN-COV in the first quarter of 2022. Roche, which sells the treatment in the rest of the world as Ronapreve, reported sales of $636 million in the period, giving Regeneron $216 million from the profit-sharing deal.
Even with the loss of REGEN-COV revenue in the U.S., growth in the rest of the portfolio helped Regeneron register a “solid quarter” to start the year, RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams wrote in a note to investors. Overall revenue beat Wall Street’s consensus estimate of around $2.7 billion, Piper Sandler analyst Christopher Raymond said.
Regeneron’s Eylea eye disease treatment brought in sales of more than $1.5 billion in the U.S., an increase of 13%. The company also received revenue from Bayer, which sells the drug in the rest of the world. Sales of Dupixent soared 43% to about $1.8 billion in the first quarter, helping boost profits from Regeneron’s antibody collaboration with Sanofi to $415 million from $261 million a year earlier.