Despite generic headwinds to Xarelto and challenges across different sectors of the conglomerate suggesting “twists and turns” in the road ahead, Bayer is confident that the course it’s laid out thus far “is the right one,” CEO Bill Anderson mused on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.
The German drugmaker’s third quarter (PDF) may have offered a taste of what’s to come over the next year or two, with generic versions of blood thinner Xarelto biting off sales while blockbuster Regeneron-partnered Eylea holds down the fort and newly launched products Nubeqa and Kerendia rise to high-earner status.
The company maintained that it can “largely compensate” for the Xarelto declines, which this quarter added up to a 23.8% year-over-year dip to 802 million euros ($851 million), pharma group president Stefan Oelrich said on the call.
However, it’s unclear when the genericization dynamics will peak, meaning that either 2025 or 2026 could make for a “transition year” for Bayer, Oelrich explained. What is clear is that Xarelto’s downward trend is expected to continue into 2025 at least.
On the flip side, rising prostate cancer drug Nubeqa and chronic kidney disease med Kerendia should continue on their growth trajectories throughout the year.
Bayer has long charted a blockbuster course for Nubeqa. Now, that goal has been met with a 1.08 billion euro ($1.1 billion) haul over the year so far. Third-quarter sales alone grew 83% from the same time last year, making the drug the company’s third bestseller behind Xarelto and Eylea.
While Kerendia is far behind Nubeqa in terms of sales, the 2021-approved drug is on its own massive growth journey, with third-quarter sales of 126 million euros ($134 million), up 96% from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Eylea saw 8.6% growth to reach 848 million euros ($900 million) during the three-month period.
Xarelto generics aren’t the only threat Bayer is facing to one of its high-selling drugs. Biosimilar copycats to blockbuster eye med Eylea are looming, but, with a recently approved high-dose formulation and a prefilled syringe now on the market, Oelrich maintained that the company is in a good spot to “defend our market-leading position.”
As it stands, Bayer’s main focus is on securing new patient starts for the high-dose formulation, but more pressure on existing patients to switch to the high-dose option is expected once biosimilars launch, Oelrich said.
All together, the quarter’s growth among some of Bayer’s top sellers added up to a 2.3% bump for the pharma sector, which brought in 4.5 billion euros ($4.7 billion) for the period. For the rest of the year, the company expects its pharma sales growth to come in at the upper end of its recently revised guidance of between 0% and 3%.