Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ Q1 results beat estimates

Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) topped market expectations on revenue and earnings for the first quarter of 2019. Shares were up 1.7% in after-market hours on Tuesday.

Total revenue improved to $858 million from $640 million last year. Total product revenue grew 34% year-over-year to $857 million, mainly due to the uptake of SYMDEKO in the US since launch.

On a GAAP basis, net income attributable to Vertex grew 28% year-over-year to $269 million, or $1.03 per share. Adjusted net income grew 51% to $296 million, or $1.14 per share.

CEO Jeffrey Leiden said, “Our goal is to develop transformative medicines for all people with CF and other serious diseases and to ensure all eligible patients have access to these medicines as quickly as possible. We have made significant progress toward achieving this goal by rapidly advancing our triple combination regimens through late-stage development, and we remain on track to submit a New Drug Application for one of these medicines in the third quarter of 2019. We also continue to advance our earlier-stage programs targeting AAT, pain, FSGS and sickle cell disease. In the first quarter, we again delivered strong revenue and earnings growth, which further enhances our ability to make significant investments in internal and external innovation.”

KALYDECO and ORKAMBI posted revenue declines while SYMDEKO/SYMKEVI posted a significant revenue growth during the quarter.

The company saw an increase in R&D and SG&A expenses, mainly due to the incremental investment to support the global use of Vertex’s medicines and the expansion of Vertex’s pipeline in CF and other new disease areas.

For the full year of 2019, the company expects total product revenues in the range of $3.45 billion to $3.55 billion. Total product revenue growth in 2019 is expected to be driven mainly by the full-year impact of the SYMDEKO launch, reimbursement deals done in 2018 and label expansions for CF medicines.

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