As Teva proceeds down the more muted growth path that it telegraphed early this year, the generics and innovative medicines hybrid isn’t letting a little sales slump affect its confidence in a budding portfolio of branded drugs.
For the second quarter of 2026, Teva’s revenue decreased by 1% year over year in U.S. currencies—mainly attributed to pressures in the generics business—landing at $4.1 billion for the three-month period.
The performance still came out ahead of consensus estimates, Evercore ISI analysts pointed out in a note to clients Wednesday. Teva’s stock price was up nearly 8% as of 10:00 am ET on July 29.
The company’s overall commercial execution across its branded drugs Austedo for Huntington’s disease and tardive dyskinesia, migraine prevention med Ajovy, and Uzedy in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder has been “solid,” the Evercore team pointed out. Remarking on Ajovy in particular, Evercore’s Umer Raffat said he was “shocked that Teva’s leadership has gotten the CGRP franchise to almost ~$1B.”
Reflecting on Ajovy’s recent success, Teva CEO Richard Francis told Fierce in an interview Wednesday that the migraine prevention med had “been sort of given up on” due to a competitive market and “sluggish” sales when he joined the company years ago.
Ajovy is joined by multiple other injected or infused CGRP migraine prevention treatments with hefty brand recognition, such as Amgen’s Aimovig, Eli Lilly’s Emgality and Lundbeck’s Vyepti, plus a newer generation of orals that include prominent names like Pfizer’s Nurtec ODT.
With Francis at the helm, “we decided that we needed to really, really go for it,” the CEO said. Since prioritizing the branded migraine drug, the company has “seen this product grow across all of our regions,” he said.
Francis added that Ajovy now “consistently grows faster than the market,” crediting Teva’s focused execution for the fact that it is “outcompeting” its rivals and taking market share “wherever we sell it.”
Austedo, for its part, continues to lead Teva’s commercial pack, growing sales 40% at local currencies in the second quarter to $696 million, while Ajovy and Uzedy grew 56% to $244 million and 43% to $77 million over that span, respectively.
Teva expects to carry that branded momentum through the remainder of 2026 and now anticipates those branded meds will together reach around $3.7 billion, which would represent roughly 17% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.
Beyond that core stable of brands, Teva now expects one potential innovative medicine launch per year over the next five years, with hopes of immediately building out its schizophrenia franchise with an FDA nod for long-acting olanzapine before 2026 is out. The company is also buzzy about the near-approval potential of ecopipam, a D1 receptor agonist in development for Tourette syndrome that it picked up in its $700 million-upfront buyout of Emalex Biosciences in April.
At the same time, however, Teva’s generics business—which remains a core focus of the company—has continued to face pressure from competitors to generic Revlimid. In the second quarter, the business unit’s sales slipped 15% worldwide. In the key U.S. market, generics sales fell some 31% to around $660 million.
While small-molecule generics continue to take a pummeling, Teva again emphasized its biosimilar portfolio of biologic copycats, noting that the segment remains on track to yield $800 million in revenue next year.
Teva may eventually face a more foundational challenge on the generics front after President Donald Trump announced last week that he plans to impose a 100% tariff on generic medicines imported to the U.S. starting Aug. 2028, with a 200% rate to follow thereafter, for companies that do not commit to reshoring manufacturing to America.
As drugmakers and other industry stakeholders await more details on the trade duty proposal—which could prove challenging for many lower-margin generics makers to satisfy—Francis didn’t seem particularly concerned about his own company’s positioning.
“Obviously, this news has just come out, so we’re digesting this and understanding what that could look like,” Francis admitted when asked about U.S. generics tariffs on an analyst call Wednesday. “But I would also point out that we do have a number of factories in the U.S.—six.”
Francis added that he believes Teva is “one of the largest direct manufacturers in the U.S.,” and clarified that “we have a bit of time to work this one out and understand what the administration is trying to do.”
“As you can imagine, we’ve always been in close discussions with the administration, being such a contributor to the healthcare system in the United States,” he said.
With heightened expectations for its trio of branded growth drivers, Teva is now projecting 2026 revenue will land between $16.5 billion and $16.8 billion. Back in April, the company had been targeting a range of $16.4 billion to $16.8 billion.
Teva has been writing its return to growth story under Francis ever since his arrival at the company in 2023, although it did predict in January that 2026 would see a downturn in the growth that has characterized the company’s past three years under new leadership.
Under Francis’ ‘Pivot to Growth’ strategy, the company has been aiming to deliver on its existing growth engines, step up its work in innovation, sustain its substantial generics muscle and then continue to focus its business, in that order.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional comments from an interview with Teva CEO Richard Francis.