Amgen (AMGN) will be reporting its fourth quarter and full-year 2018 earnings results on Tuesday, January 29 after market closes. Analysts expect the biotech company to earn $3.28 per share on revenue of $5.86 billion for the recently ended quarter. This represents a year-over-year increase of 13% in earnings and 1% growth in revenue.
Over the last four quarters, Amgen has beat Street’s views in three consecutive quarters and the company disappointed the investors when it reported fourth quarter 2017 results.
Let’s take a quick look of the Amgen’s third quarter results:
When Amgen announced its third quarter financial results the company lifted the earnings and revenue outlook for fiscal 2018. Non-GAAP EPS was upped to a range of $14.00-14.25 versus the previous outlook of $13.30-14.00 and revenue target was lifted to $23.2-23.5 billion range from the prior estimated range of $22.5-23.2 billion.
Investors will be closely watching out how Amgen’s legacy drugs performed in the fourth quarter. Sales of Amgen’s legacy drugs, namely Enbrel and Neulasta, the two largest contributors for the company’s product sales in Q3, decreased 5% and 6%, respectively.
Amgen’s pipeline looks healthy. In January 2019, the company announced the approval of Repatha drug in China to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events, osteoporosis drug EVENITY’s approval in China and European Commission’s approval of BLINCYTO, which is used to treat a type of blood cancer.
Related: Amgen (AMGN) Q3 2018 earnings conference call transcript
The Thousand Oaks, California-based pharma company increased its first quarter 2019 dividend by 10% to $1.45 per share, which will be paid on March 8, 2019, to all shareholders of record as of February 15, 2019.
The other notable pharma companies that will be announcing their quarterly results on January 29, 2019, include Pfizer (PFE), Biogen (BIIB) and Allergan (AGN).
Shares of Amgen ended at $198.77, down 1.09% on Friday. On average, the majority of the analysts covering Amgen recommend to “Hold” the stock, which has got a price target of $206.24. The stock had gained 7% in the last three months and 2% so far this year.