Cagrilintide

AbbVie beat revenue estimates across nearly its entire portfolio in the second quarter, save for aesthetics and Humira. The company said Thursday that it had revenue of $15.4 billion in the second quarter, coming in $400 million more than analysts expected and up 6.6% from the $14.5 billion it reported in the same period a year ago. The company’s shares $ABBV rose nearly 5% in early trading on Thursday but pared back to 2% by mid-morning. AbbVie has again upped its 2025 revenue guidance to $60.5 billion, according to remarks made by CEO Rob Michael on the company’s earnings call. That’s $800 million more than its most recent projection and $1.5 billion higher than the guidance given at the beginning of the year, he added. Michael and other executives also expressed interest in doing more deals in neuroscience, obesity and oncology, where it’s keeping close tabs on the PD-1xVEGF competition. AbbVie has inked more than 30 business development deals since the start of 2024, the CEO said. The Chicago-area pharma giant has “delivered the stand-out print so far across large-cap biopharma,” Cantor analyst Carter Gould wrote Thursday morning. Several drugmakers have already reported their second-quarter results so far, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, which slashed its revenue projections a week before sharing its quarterly results. Like its peers, AbbVie has to contend with a major patent expiration for Humira, once the world’s top-selling drug. But the company has been able to mostly weather the patent cliff over the past two years by quickly ramping up the rollout of Skyrizi and Rinvoq, its follow-up autoimmune medicines. Skyrizi pulled in $4.42 billion in sales in the quarter, a 62% jump over last year and $400 million higher than projections from TD Cowen analysts. Meanwhile, Rinvoq reeled in $2.02 billion, a 41% increase over the same period last year and in line with analyst estimates. Rinvoq, a JAK inhibitor with a handful of approved indications, passed the first of two Phase 3 trials in alopecia areata this week. While AbbVie has been able to contend with Humira competition for the past two years, the drug’s sales came in $280 million lower than expected in the second quarter, TD Cowen analysts pointed out. Humira’s sales sank 58% year-over-year to $1.18 billion in the second quarter. Botox Cosmetic also missed Wall Street’s calculations by about $38 million. After joining the obesity R&D race earlier this year, AbbVie executives signaled that they’re interested in further padding out the pipeline in the industry’s hottest, and potentially most lucrative, field. In March, AbbVie paid $350 million upfront to Danish biotech Gubra for a Phase 1 obesity asset called GUB014295. Michael told analysts that AbbVie aims to “build upon [the Gubra deal] with more BD” in obesity. Gubra’s asset is an amylin analog, which could offer better tolerability, more desirable dosing and longer durability than existing GLP-1 medications, chief scientific officer Roopal Thakkar told analysts. “If there are other assets that address those similarly to an amylin class, and we have an opportunity to combine, that would be something that we’d be very interested in,” Thakkar said. “The other thing we like about the ’295 molecule is a neutral pH, which may make it simpler to combine with other assets that address these.” AbbVie’s leaders also noted the company could lean on its aesthetics business to eventually roll out its obesity drugs. “We observed that the cash-pay obesity or weight loss market in our aesthetics practices became the second-largest revenue driver for them in terms of patient flow,” commercial chief Jeffrey Stewart said. Neurotoxins were the number one revenue driver, followed by obesity drugs and dermal fillers. That trend has “since moderated” due to the “compounding dynamics and the way the clinics were thinking about this,” Stewart said. “This was an important, certainly not the only, reason for the Gubra transaction, because we know that that’s just going to be ongoing demand.” He also said patients who have been on GLP-1s, whether compounded or branded versions, will continue to think about “weight loss as part of their aesthetic journey over time.” Lilly, the market leader in obesity, has been adamant that its drugs are not used for aesthetic purposes. AbbVie is reportedly in talks with psychedelics partner Gilgamesh about a deal, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. “We are obviously going to fully invest in neuroscience. It’s our second-largest therapeutic area. It’s the fastest growing in our portfolio,” Michael said. “We expect to be the largest neuroscience company in the industry next year.” Meanwhile, AbbVie is also interested in the burgeoning PD-1xVEGF space, which has been part of some of the largest deals in recent years from Bristol Myers , Pfizer , Merck and Summit Therapeutics . “There’s several assets that are revealing data over time, but it is something that we’re interested in and looking,” Thakkar told analysts. “How we think about that is what can partner well with our internal ADC platform.”