In about a year after launching a revamp strategy under CEO Richard Francis, Teva has managed to return its generics business to growth, secure approvals for a pair of high-profile biosimilars and chart market gains with its star branded treatment, Austedo, in Huntington’s disease.
“If you look at where we’ve delivered our results, it’s where we focused our efforts,” Francis said in an interview with Fierce Pharma. The CEO, who took the reins at Teva during an especially turbulent patch for the company at the start of 2023, said Teva's current financial performance validates the sweeping turnaround strategy he unveiled last May.
While Francis caveated that Teva still has a “long way to go,” he figures the company has shown it can execute on the four-pronged "Pivot to Growth" strategy “very well” and is “consistently doing so quarter on quarter.”
Francis’ revamp campaign emphasizes Teva’s commercial and biosimilar portfolios, its innovate pipeline, its generics powerhouse and focused capital allocation.
With regards the latter objective, Teva has been busy reducing its manufacturing footprint. The company closed three sites over the course of 2023, bringing its total footprint down to 49, Eli Kalif, Teva’s chief financial officer, said on an analyst call Wednesday.
Teva plans to close or divest another four facilities by the end of 2025 with the goal to reach between 40 and 42 plants by 2027, Kalif said. The CFO also noted that Teva is selling its generics business in Japan, with the expectation it can complete a sale “within the next year.”
Teva's strategy updates came as the company reported a 5% revenue increase for 2024’s first quarter, though its profits fell just short of analyst expectations.
Teva credited the revenue growth, in large part, to sales of its Huntington’s med Austedo—which grew U.S. sales by 67% to $282 million—and its generics business, which saw revenues climb 9% across “all regions."
In addition, Teva’s migraine prevention drug Ajovy—which the company is propping up alongside Austedo and its schizophrenia med Uzedy as three of its key branded growth drivers—delivered $113 million over the first three months of the year, an 18% increase over 2023’s first quarter.
As for Uzedy, Teva and its French drug delivery partner MedinCell won approval for their extended-release version of the tried-and-true schizophrenia med risperidone last April. They launched the new Uzedy product the following month.
The number of hospitals ordering Uzedy is “increasing week-on-week,” Francis said, noting that many of those same hospitals are coming back for a second helping after placing their initial product requests.
Teva figures it can leverage its commercial Uzedy resources to help launch a second MedinCell-partnered schizophrenia prospect, TEV’749, by 2025 or early 2026, depending upon the timing of the FDA’s review, the CEO said.
In tandem with its earnings release Wednesday, Teva unveiled a phase 3 win for TEV’749, which weds olanzapine with the same SteadyTeq controlled-release technology from MedinCell that underpins Uzedy. Olanzapine, originally developed by Eli Lilly, is the most prescribed second-generation antipsychotic for schizophrenia in the U.S. Teva launched a Dr. Reddy’s-partnered generic of the drug back in 2011.
Those olanzapine results helped push Teva’s shares up more than 13% Wednesday to a peak not seen since 2019, Reuters pointed out.
Biosimilar ambitions
On the biosimilar front, Teva is planning a near-term launch of Simlandi, the company’s Alvotech-partnered biosimilar referencing AbbVie’s Humira (adalimumab).
Still, Simlandi may not be an instant revenue hit, as evidenced by some of the struggles experienced by other Humira biosim players like Boehringer Ingelheim.
Following lackluster sales of its own biologic copycat Cyltezo, BI last month blamed the situation on the fact that many pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have kept AbbVie’s brand-name Humira on their formulary prescribing lists, stifling uptake of a lower-cost alternatives.
When Teva and Alvotech launch Simlandi in the U.S., they'll be going up against at least nine other biosimilars—plus the branded option.
Novartis spinoff Sandoz reported earlier this week that sales of its biosimilar portfolio, led by Humira copycat Hyrimoz, ticked up 21% to $623 million in the first three months of 2024. Sandoz pointed to data from IQVIA showing Hyrimoz captured 82% of biosimilar prescriptions written for adalimumab through the week of April 25.
Much of that biosimilar surge seems to come down to CVS Caremark's decision to remove brand-name Humira from its prescribing lists and cover biosimilars instead.
Asked whether he agreed with recent moves by the likes of CVS Caremark to kick brand-name Humira off some formularies, Francis said: “Would I like that? Yes. Should that happen? Yes.” But as for whether it will happen across PBMs writ large, “probably not,” Francis commented.
That said, Francis says Teva has witnessed a change in the traditionally biosimilar-agnostic U.S. market as people start to think more about long-term cost savings.
For the full year, Teva is standing by its previous expectation to generate 2024 sales in the range of $15.7 billion to $16.3 billion.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with comments from Teva's first-quarter earnings call.