BGEN ($60 run/win) beats street, tries to expand MS drug market
(UPDATE: Updates throughout)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan 17 (Reuters) - Biotech giant Biogen Inc. (NasdaqNM:BGEN - news) on Wednesday reported net revenues of $245 million and earnings per share of 47 cents a share, beating Wall Street estimates by a penny.
Fueled by its flagship multiple sclerosis drug Avonex, the company said net income for the year increased to $334 million or $2.16 cents per share, which includes 41 cents per share of net one-time events.
Analyst said the Avonex sales drove what they called a solid fourth quarter.
Biogen is trying to expand the market for Avonex, the most prescribed drug for the most common form of MS, a debilitating disorder involving decreased function of the brain's nerve cells. On Tuesday it released results showing the drug proved effective in reducing the disease's progression for other sufferers.
Its chief financial officer, Peter Kellogg, said in a webcast that the current market for the drug, a beta-interferon, is about 60 percent of the 850,000 MS patients in the United States and Europe.
The market could expand by 50 percent if Avonex is approved for treatment of patients at high risk for the disease and those who have a more advanced form of MS known as secondary progressive, Kellogg said.
Biogen closed down 1-1/4 points to $56 on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.
By the end of December, more than 97,000 patients worldwide were on Avonex therapy, the company said. Earlier in the year, Biogen Chief Executive Jim Mullen said he thought that number would be 100,000.
For the three months ending Dec. 31, Biogen reported 47 cents in earnings per share, beating Wall Street's estimate by one cent. It earned 44 cents per share for the year earlier period.
Revenues for the quarter were $245 million compared with $225 million for the same quarter last year and sales of Avonex hit $203 million for the quarter.
Kellogg called 2001 a ``year of transition,'' noting that the research and development budget would increase slightly.
He told analysts he expected first quarter earnings to be in the range of 45 cents to 46 cents a share. For the same period last year, the company posted earnings of 41 cents per share.
The current earnings per share estimates for 2001 range from $1.90 to $1.98, according to Kellogg and he guided the analysts to the range's lower end.
ANALYSTS ALL OVER THE MAP ON BIOGEN
But at least one analyst, Peter Drake of Prudential Securities, had Biogen earning just $1.68 per share. He has a sell rating on the stock.
Kellogg said that for the two to three years after 2001 he expected Biogen to have ``total revenue growth in the high teens and earnings per share growth also in the high teens.'' This comes despite a steady decline in revenue from royalties of drugs it has licensed to other companies.
Biogen said it hopes to have final results of Phase III trials of the next product in its pipeline, Amevive, a psoriasis treatment, by mid-year, according to Biogen's chief medical researcher Burt Adelman.
If results of the worldwide study are positive, Biogen said it hopes to file for regulatory approval for Amevive simultaneously in the United States and Europe in the second half of this year which would mean a product launch in second half of 2002.
Analysts have been all over the map on Biogen with some saying it is an undervalued biotech company and others advising clients to sell.
S.G. Cowen analyst Eric Schmidt said the company ``had a solid fourth quarter. The fundamentals are improving for the Avonex franchise...and right now, investors can get many options in the Biogen pipeline for free.'' Schmidt has an earnings estimate of $1.95 per share and a buy rating on Biogen.
But Prudential's Drake told Reuters he was ``surprised and skeptical of the guidance given for that kind of growth.''
``They had a solid fourth quarter as is often the case. They are suggesting that Q1 is going to be sequentially down from Q4 that's not surprising. I'm surprised by the guidance in the $1.90 range,'' he said. |
