Ustekinumab biosimilar (Alvotech)

During the first half of the year, Stada posted 6% year-over-year revenue growth to 2.12 billion euros ($2.48 billion). It appears an IPO is back on the table for German generics maker Stada.The company is “preparing an IPO in the autumn, provided the general conditions are right,” CEO Peter Goldschmidt told German news agency dpa, as quoted by Reuters.Stada, owned by private equity firms Bain Capital and Cinven, has spent much of the year toying with either an IPO or a buyout. The company was ready to file its intention for a German IPO back in March, but it put the plans on hold after being advised against the move due to market volatility tied to geopolitical events, people familiar with the matter told Reuters at the time.In July, private equity investor CapVest Partners swooped in with talks to take on a majority stake in the company in a deal that could have valued Stada at about 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion), including debt, Bloomberg reported at the time. Bain Capital and Cinven originally took over Stada for 5.32 billion euros ($5.63 billion) in 2017, but they've reportedly been weighing options to exit the business since 2023.The CapVest talks ultimately fell through, leaving Stada to pivot back to IPO preparations, Bloomberg reported about a week ago. The negotiations broke down due to differences in valuation and the structure of the proposal, the news service said. The revived IPO musings come as Stada reported “broad-based growth in the first half of this year” despite a “volatile" market, Goldschmidt said in the company’s Thursday earnings release. Overall, the company posted 6% year-over-year revenue growth to 2.12 billion euros ($2.48 billion), with the performance aided by the July 2024 launch of Alvotech-partnered Uzpruvo, a biosimilar to Johnson & Johnson’s immunology powerhouse Stelara. Stada’s Alvotech alliance also includes select ex-U.S. commercial rights to a biosimilar candidate of Amgen’s bone meds Prolia and Xgeva, plus rights to Alvotech’s Humira biosimilar in certain countries in Central Asia. Over the first half of the year, the generics maker inked 50 new business development and licensing deals, the CEO pointed out in the Thursday release. The company has "very limited" exposure to the U.S. market and its potential tariff reforms, Goldschmidt noted.

More than 50% of Teva’s U.S. products—including its lead drug Austedo—are manufactured locally across eight production sites, the company's CFO, Eli Kalif, said Wednesday. As more drugmakers begin to report second-quarter earnings against the backdrop of the first material pharmaceutical tariff reveal from the Trump administration, Teva Pharmaceuticals isn’t sweating the situation.The Israel-based generics and innovative medicines hybrid has “absorbed the already confirmed tariffs into our 2025 guidance,” Teva’s CFO, Eli Kalif, said on a call with analysts Wednesday.More than 50% of Teva’s U.S. products—including its lead drug Austedo—are manufactured locally across eight production sites, Kalif pointed out. Further, the company has “very limited exposures” in India and China, with Kalif attributing Teva’s lack of reliance on the latter country to the closure of its API business there four years back.“All in all, when we are looking at our supply chain, our ability to actually build inventory and to manage our manufacturing steps, we don’t see here, currently, any meaningful impact for the short term,” Kalif said. The CFO’s comments came after pharmaceutical import tariffs finally surfaced in a new trade deal struck between the U.S. and the European Union (EU) on Sunday. Under the current terms of the deal, the tariff rate stands at 15% for pharmaceutical imports—and those of many other goods—entering the U.S. from Europe.Many unknowns still surround the EU tariffs, including how the U.S.’ Section 232 investigation into the national security implications of pharmaceutical imports could influence the current rate, if at all. Further, in a potentially key carveout for Teva, certain generic drugs will be excluded from the tariffs, though it’s currently unclear which ones.Teva has “done very comprehensive work to understand how we can mitigate the impact [of tariffs] on our business,” the company’s CEO, Richard Francis, said on the call. He cautioned, however, that “there’s a lot of ambiguity about what really occurred with these tariffs,” referring to the 15% duties in the U.S.-EU accord.“I think the way we’ve always played this on tariffs is to be very conservative,” Francis added. “[W]e think about this comprehensively, and probably with a more glass-half-empty approach.”Francis noted that the company has several mitigation plans prepped that Teva can roll out once more details on the Trump administration’s pharmaceutical tariffs become clear.Teva has good reason to want to keep those tariffs from impacting its business as it continues a sales growth rebound and innovative medicines pivot under a multi-year turnaround strategy dubbed “Pivot to Growth.”While Teva is continuing to make good on many different aspects of its plan, the company’s performance in the second quarter was a bit more mixed than it has been in other recent earnings periods.All told, Teva’s revenue grew 1% at constant currencies to $4.2 billion after taking sales from the company’s generics joint venture with Takeda out of the mix. Late last year, Teva and Takeda decided to divest the Japan business to better focus on their own innovative medicine ambitions.When including the Japan JV sales, Teva’s total revenue for the period was flat year over year, according to a company earnings presentation (PDF).Nevertheless, Teva’s focus on its innovative portfolio continues to pay off, with the company now raising its full-year sales guidance for all three of its key marketed meds: Austedo, Uzedy and Ajovy.Teva’s chief drug, Austedo—approved in Huntington’s disease and tardive dyskinesia—grew sales 19% to $498 million for the quarter and is now expected to bring home sales between $2 billion and $2.05 billion for the year, compared to a previous range of $1.95 billion to $2.05 billion.Ajovy for migraine prevention, which delivered second-quarter sales growth of 31% to $155 million, is now pegged to reach sales between $630 million and $640 million, versus a prior projection of roughly $600 million.And Teva’s long-acting risperidone product for schizophrenia, Uzedy, is now in the running to secure $190 million to $200 million in 2025 sales after growing 120% in Q2 to $54 million.Uzedy has fared well in the risperidone and long-acting markets, but Teva now aims to “compete in the broader market of schizophrenia,” Francis said on the call. “So, we’ll be looking for patients to benefit from this on other molecules currently,” he explained.The CEO reiterated that Teva aims to launch the anticipated second half of its long-acting schizophrenia portfolio—long-acting olanzapine—in 2026. Together, the company estimates that the long-acting schizophrenia franchise can deliver combined peak sales of $1.5 billion to $2 billion.The consistent growth of Teva’s innovative drug trio helps affirm the company’s multiyear turnaround thesis, Francis said.When Teva first telegraphed its new growth strategy some two years back, “there was a question mark,” Francis said in an interview following the company’s earnings call. “Can Teva sell innovative drugs? And now we continue to show quarter on quarter we can.” He added that “there’s no secret sauce to this,” explaining that the company is simply hitting on commercialization fundamentals and doing them well. The company’s generics business, meanwhile, fell 2% for the period. Teva called the comparison “flat,” as Francis attributed it to both the timing of shipments of generic Revlimid and a tough comparison to Teva’s second quarter in 2024, when the company benefited from the launch of its Victoza GLP-1 copycat.The company’s biosimilars business, on the other hand, is booming.“We’ve seen some really good sales momentum in the U.S., and that’s been driven by our established brands, as well as our new launches with Selarsdi and generic Soliris that we launched in Q1 this year,” Francis said on Teva's earnings call. Selarsdi is Teva’s biosimilar to Johnson & Johnson’s Stelara.Teva is planning two more biosimilar launches before the year is out.  “I think the thing that I’m seeing people take away is the transition from Teva as pure play generics to a biopharma company seemed like it was fiction two years ago,” Francis said in the interview with Fierce.“How could it be done,” he continued. “What we’re seeing now, with our ability to handle a flat generics quarter, because of our innovative growth, shows we’re well on our way to doing that, and I think that’s really exciting.” Editor's note: This story was updated with additional comments from an interview with Teva's CEO at 1:38 pm ET on July 30.