Two pharmaceutical giants with heavy presence in Boulder County are performing at or above expectations, but anticipating challenges in the year ahead as patents on their drugs wear out, and they look to local innovation to turn things around.
British multinational AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) reported fourth quarter revenues of $5.6 million and earnings of $1.21 per share, in line with expectations.
But executives offered a cautious outlook for 2017 as sales of its blockbuster cholesterol drug, Crestor, slow in the face of competition from generics.
Full year sales for Crestor were down 32 percent from 2015.
A number AstraZeneca’s drugs will be subject to generic competition in 2017 and beyond. In 2011, $19 billion of the company’s $30 billion revenue came from products with expiring patents, according to CEO Pascal Soriot.
“By 2018, the great majority of those sales will be gone and that’s what we have had to replace and we continue to work to replace,” he said during the company’s Thursday earnings call.
He said 2017 would be a “turning point” for AstraZeneca as it looks to its pipeline of developing drugs for immuno-oncology and targeted treatments.
Part of that work is being done in Boulder, where the company is doing a multimillion-dollar revamp of the former Amgen facility it purchased in 2014 for $14.6 million.
Last month, site director Darren Dasburg said the $106 million retrofit was about 55 percent completed and production of the bladder cancer drug durvalumab to begin later this year.
AstraZeneca also purchased the 70-acre Longmont Amgen campus in October for $64.5 million to support operations in Boulder.
The California-headquartered Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) in 2014 announced it would pull out of Colorado entirely, eliminating hundreds of jobs.
However, in the fall, it quietly began rehiring in Longmont, where anaemia drug Epogen used to be manufactured, as delays hindered production in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
In a Thursday conference call, executive said Amgen had renegotiated a supply deal with Denver’s DaVita, extending the contract through 2022.
Also on Thursday, Amgen reported fourth quarter earnings of $2.59 per share on revenues of $6 billion, beating expectations.
Sales were helped by Enbrel, a rheumatoid arthritis drug, but the company also issued a 2017 forecast that was lower than analyst estimates, for reasons similar to AstraZeneca’s.
“We will likely face headwinds in 2017 as declines in our mature brands will begin to offset volume growth from our more recently launched products,” said CEO Robert Bradway in a conference call.
The most promising of these product is cholesterol-lowering drug Repatha, which has so far shown positive results in a massive 27,500-patient clinical trial.
Amgen’s shares closed the week up slightly at $167.39. AstraZeneca finished at $27.92, also a small increase over Monday’s open.
In other earnings news, Broomfield-based Ball Corp. (NYSE:BLL) reported earnings of $3.49 per share for the year and 87 cents for the quarter, coming in slightly ahead of analysts expectations of $3.48 per share for the year.
The company, which completed its acquisition of Rexam Corp. last year to become the largest can maker in the world, continues to struggle with a weak revenue stream. Revenues for 2014 came in at $224 million, down from $281 million in 2015.
Its aerospace division, which has significant operations in Boulder, continues to be a bright spot and has created a $1.4 billion backlog in orders.
Ball shares closed at $73.84 on Friday. Their 52-week range is $62.30 to $82.24.
Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
