Cosmetic neurotoxin up-and-comer Jeuveau is giving Evolus something to smile about, thanks to record sales in the last three months of 2021. And the drug still has plenty of room to grow in a $2 billion U.S. market ruled by AbbVie’s aesthetics juggernaut Botox, analysts said Friday.
Evolus’ Jeuveau garnered $34.7 million in the fourth quarter and $99.7 million in full-year 2021 sales, rising more than 76% over the $56.5 million it made in 2020. Evolus credited those gains to boosted sales volume and the med’s higher price point in the U.S. The company also highlighted the success of its beauty-first, millennial-targeted marketing push.
“Our strong results were driven by our singularity in focus targeting Jeuveau to millennial consumers, the fastest-growing segment of neurotoxin users, through our first in class co-branded marketing program,” David Moatazedi, president and CEO at Evolus, said in a statement.
In 2021, the company said it ran more than 2,300 individualized co-branded marketing campaigns across the U.S., which ginned up more than 1 billion impressions for the year. “This is more than four times the number of campaigns that were run in 2020 and 20 times the number of impressions,” the company said.
Many analysts agree that Evolus’ promotional strategy is paying off.
Evolus’ focus on millennials and the medical spa sector plus investments in co-branding with aesthetic practices “should enable Evolus to outperform the overall aesthetic neurotoxin market growth by about three-fold" this year, Mizuho Securities analysts wrote in a note to clients Friday. They forecast Jeuveau growth of 49%, versus a 16% increase across the market.
Meanwhile, Evolus’ “co-branded initiatives are proving to be highly successful and targeted (the latest expansion of this strategy is in streaming TV) and offer a unique point of differentiation for Jeuveau,” SVB Leerink analysts wrote in a separate note.
Jeuveau’s $99.7 million revenue is a drop in the bucket compared to the $5.23 billion AbbVie’s Botox generated worldwide in 2021, but Evolus’ drug still has ample room to grow, multiple analysts said. Based on publicly available information, Jeuveau looks to be the fastest-growing med on the cosmetic neurotoxin scene, the Mizuho Securities team said.
Meanwhile, Botox, which was first approved way back in 1991, carries a slate of medical indications, too, including migraine and treatment of urinary incontinence. Jeuveau, which snagged its green light in 2019, is only approved on the aesthetics side.
Cantor Fitzgerald analysts, for their part, told clients they believe Jeuveau’s value proposition is “under-appreciated,” adding that they think the drug can “pick up meaningful market share in what we view as a fast-growing and highly under-penetrated market.”
The SVB Leerink team suggested Jeuveau has “significant” room to grab a bigger slice of the roughly $2 billion U.S. aesthetics pie.
Jeuveau is approaching several milestones that could boost sales in the long term. The drug’s European launch remains on track for the third quarter, and the company plans to start enrolling a phase 2 study of “extra strength” Jeuveau in Q1. Data from that trial should arrive in about a year, the SVB Leerink team pointed out. Evolus also plans to increase the med’s price this year.
The European aesthetics market is worth some 25% of the U.S.’ at about $500 million and features lower pricing, too. Nevertheless, the continent makes up the second-largest aesthetics market globally, SVB Leerink said.
As for the rest of the year, Evolus forecasts revenues between $143 million and $150 million. That prediction, which assumes 43% to 50% growth, is “much higher than the industry growth rate of mid-teens,” the Cantor Fitzgerald team noted.