Pharma came storming out of the gate at this year's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in a Monday full of deal talk, CEO ambitions and analyst assessments and prognostications.
Merck chief Ken Frazier predicted that Keytruda will just keep on growing, for instance, while Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan argued that the company's cell and gene therapy work now will pay off big-time in the long run, even if the numbers don't look so great right now. J&J's CFO defended against talc allegations in a bombshell Reuters article. Regeneron touted better-than-expected Eylea growth and blasted doubts about its late-to-market checkpoint inhibitor Libtayo. And much more.
In fact, even before presentations kicked off bright and early with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Celgene's joint fireside chat—focusing, naturally, on last week's $74 billion megamerger—Eli Lilly had announced its own cancer-related buyout. And Narasimhan seemed quite eager to outline his own strategy; so eager, in fact, that he started his morning presentation 10 minutes early.
Merck & Co. has plenty of room to grow with Keytruda, and to see it, investors need only look at its opportunities outside the U.S. The recent European approval of the company’s Keytruda-chemo combo in previously untreated lung cancer alone tripled the addressable patient population the New Jersey drugmaker had in the EU, CEO Ken Frazier said during a Monday afternoon fireside chat. The company is also "just getting started" with melanoma in China, and it recently had a number of studies added to its label in Japan, too. But while investors tend to focus on Keytruda, Merck has more going on in oncology—think Lenvima and Lynparza—and beyond, too, Frazier and R&D chief Roger Perlmutter stressed. "We’ve never had a more exciting vaccine portfolio at Merck than we have right now, and I can speak across 25 years of experience," Perlmutter noted.
How has Sanofi made sense of its Dengvaxia experiences? Look no further than the old adage: Learn from your mistakes. For one, the company was "overly optimistic" with its early sales forecasts for the shot, vaccine head David Loew told FiercePharma. And its "flipping the model" strategy, touted early on as a key part of the launch strategy, hamstrung the rollout even more.
Novartis may have been hamstrung by CAR-T manufacturing problems, but the company still figures it can build a cell and gene therapy platform strong enough to deliver success not only with Kymriah but a full "game board" of treatments for many more diseases, CEO Vas Narasimhan said Monday. The company is partnering up to boost Kymriah supplies and has inked gene therapy deals while working on "innovative" deals with payers to cover treatments that can potentially cure diseases, but at record-breaking price tags.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in his first JPM presentation as chief, had two key words for his audience: patent and cliff. But in this case, Bourla's not talking about danger but talking up a cliff-free future that follows after Lyrica tumbles off patent in June. Meanwhile, Pfizer has a strong balance sheet and could pull off big deals, Bourla said, but instead, the company is focused on R&D and upcoming launches.
Teva’s leaders have dropped bad news at J.P. Morgan in the past, but not this year. "The take-home is that everything’s on plan … now you know what’s coming," CEO Kåre Schultz said to open his presentation. The company is "very much on track" to hit the $3 billion in cost savings it promised, and it’s whittled its debt down to $27.6 billion from $35 billion over the last nine months. But what about Teva’s ability to keep revenue flowing in? Schultz acknowledged that the company has faced a fair amount of skepticism, but "I think we’ve proven that we can do that," he said, pointing to new migraine drug Ajovy—which is capturing 30% of new-to-brand prescriptions—and CNS drug Austedo, which still has plenty of room to grow. On the flip side, Teva has also stemmed the decline of some key moneymakers, including Copaxone, which is hanging on to 70% share despite generic competition. Teva’s own copycat u...
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