From thestreet.com, very good stuff there.
A Celebrated Start for Monsanto's Celebrex
By Jesse Eisinger
Senior Writer
1/26/99 12:57 PM ET
Monsanto's (MTC:NYSE) arthritis drug Celebrex, launched last week, is off to an extraordinarily strong start, according to projections from a prescription-tracking company.
The launch appears to be the second-fastest ever after the much-hyped rollout last year of Pfizer's (PFE:NYSE) Viagra, according to NDC Health Information Services. Eight days after Celebrex's launch, doctors have prescribed it almost twice as often as they prescribed Lipitor, the wildly successful cholesterol medicine launched in early 1997 by Warner-Lambert (WLA:NYSE) and Pfizer, during the equivalent period. At the beginning of 1999 Lipitor ranked second behind Viagra in terms of first-week prescriptions.
In the eight days since its launch, Celebrex has been prescribed 14,838 times, according to a projection from NDC, a Phoenix, Ariz., unit of National Data (NDC:NYSE) that tracks scrip trends daily. (The NDC projections have a 2% to 3% margin of error.) In the eight days following Lipitor's launch, doctors wrote 8,140 scrips for the therapy. Such a launch would exceed even Celebrex's high expectations.
"It's amazing. It's like nothing we've seen before," says Sam George, an NDC analyst. "Lipitor was the benchmark."
Celebrex is the first of the COX-2 pain and arthritis medications, a drug class that is widely expected to bloom into a multibillion-dollar category. Pfizer is co-marketing Celebrex with Monsanto's Searle drug unit.
Searle is putting on a cautious face. "We are cautiously optimistic about the data," says Al Heller, Searle's chief operating officer. Heller says daily scrip projections can't always be trusted because of the small sample size and relatively few days of launch. "Anecdotally, we seem to be getting a very positive response," he says.
NDC's George says comparing Celebrex's launch with Lipitor's is more appropriate than comparing it with Viagra's. Viagra was a lifestyle drug sold essentially by the media and driven by patient demand. With Lipitor and now Celebrex, on the other hand, the demand is driven by doctors. Meanwhile, the arthritis-and-pain market is similar to the cholesterol market that Lipitor targets, and both Celebrex and Lipitor target large markets that are inadequately penetrated or in which patients are unsatisfied with current treatments.
Viagra prescriptions have flattened after a meteoric launch, as the fascination with the impotence drug has petered out. Lipitor sales, however, have continued to grow. Two years after its launch, Lipitor is selling at an annualized pace of about $2.3 billion, according to an estimate from ING Baring Furman Selz. That makes Lipitor one of the best-selling drugs in the world.
Celebrex's fast start, if sustainable, serves as a potent reminder that Pfizer is the pre-eminent drug-marketer. The company has now been a part of the three fastest pharmaceutical launches ever. Monsanto, whose stock has been beaten down lately thanks to earnings disappointments and recent drug failures, is likely to get a boost if the Celebrex launch exceeds expectations.
Merck (MRK:NYSE), which will launch its own COX-2 called Vioxx, could also benefit from a successful Celebrex launch, as investors may conclude that the market for the drugs is larger than expected.
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