As other biopharma giants have divested their generics units to focus on the development and commercialization of innovative drugs, Teva has relied on its copycat business to help trigger its rebound under CEO Richard Francis.
Wednesday, Teva revealed booming third-quarter sales for its generics and biosimilars. In the U.S., revenue from the knockoffs came in at $1.1 billion, which was a 30% increase year over year, or 7% sequentially. Sales of generics and biosimilars also were up 10% year over year in Europe.
The figures contributed heavily to Teva’s overall success in the quarter. Its revenue of $4.3 billion topped analysts' consensus of $4.14 billion and was a 13% gain year over year. With the result, Teva tweaked its annual guidance up by $100 million at both ends to a window of $16.1 billion to $16.5 billion.
It was the seventh straight quarter that Teva witnessed an increase in sales, which coincides with when Francis took the reins of the company at the start of 2023. In each of the previous five years, Teva’s revenue had fallen, from a high of $22.4 billion in 2017 to $14.9 billion in 2022.
Those under the impression that Francis’ “Pivot to Growth” strategy—which he introduced in May of 2023—would follow the familiar blueprint of other pharma giants were mistaken. Though Teva’s primary goal was to beef up its innovative products portfolio, there was no de-emphasis on generics and biosimilars.
“Our third pillar (of Pivot to Growth) was about creating a sustainable generics powerhouse,” Francis said in an interview with Fierce Pharma on Wednesday. “In no way were we in a sense stepping away from generics.”
Teva said the U.S. generics’ boost was facilitated by increased sales of lenalidomide capsules, which is the copycat version of Bristol Myers Squibb’s Revlimid, and the launch of liraglutide injection, a knockoff version of Novo Nordisk’s Victoza. Teva also saw higher revenues from its version of Viatris’ EpiPen.
While Teva’s innovative drug portfolio continues to thrive, generics, including biosimilars, are still the company’s bell cow as the sector’s worldwide sales of $2.54 billion accounted for 59% of Teva’s overall revenue.
“We are not driving the growth of innovation at the consequence of our generics business,” Francis said. “We’ve shown we can do both.”
The company is taking a more selective approach to generics and biosimilars.
“We have a very healthy product pipeline in generics. But, in a way, we have maybe too many and they’re not of equal value, so we decided to cut back on our pipeline and focus on the products that kept the most value and make sure we launch those more often on time,” Francis said. “Doing that more focused approach to our portfolio, we’re slowly improving our launch performance as well as focusing on manufacturing and improving our supply performance.”
Another effort at streamlining the sector is to sell its generics business in Japan. Francis said that project is ongoing.
Teva’s sales of its top branded products continued to thrive in the third quarter. U.S. revenue from Huntington’s disease drug Austedo reached $435 million in the quarter, and the company reaffirmed its outlook of $1.6 billion in sales for the year.
Meanwhile, Uzedy pulled down $35 million for the quarter, prompting Teva to adjust its projection of annual sales of the new schizophrenia drug from $80 million to $100 million.