07.19.09
#11 Wyeth
Five Giralda Farms, Madison, NJ 07940
Tel: (973) 660-5000 Fax: (973) 660-7026
www.wyeth.com
Headcount | 47,426 | |
Year Established | 1926 | |
Pharma Revenues | $17,391 | +1% |
Total Revenues | $22,834 | +2% |
Net Income | $4,418 | -4% |
R&D Budget | $3,373 | +4% |
2008 Top Selling Drugs | |||
Drug | Indication | Sales | (+/-%) |
Effexor | depression | $3,928 | +4% |
Prevnar | pediatric vaccine | $2,716 | +11% |
Enbrel (ex-N.A.) | rheumatoid arthritis | $2,593 | +27% |
Zosyn/Tazocin | antibiotic | $1,264 | +11% |
Premarin | HRT | $1,074 | +2% |
Protonix | GERD | $806 | -58% |
BeneFix | hemophilia B | $587 | +36% |
Alliance revenues* | $1,581 | +16% |
Account for 84% of total pharma sales, up from 83% in 2007.
* Alliance revenues include revenues from Amgen's sales of Enbrel, King Pharma's sales of Altace, and J&J's sales of the Cypher drug-eluting stent, for which Wyeth makes the API of the eluted drug.
PROFILE
Last year, I wrote, “In another year or two, Wyeth may move off of our Top 20 Pharma list.” Who’s the genius now?
Actually, while I’d like to take credit for some great prescience about Wyeth getting acquired, I was just optimistic about Wyeth having so much success in biopharma and vaccines — with a corresponding slide in its small molecule lineup — that it would move over to our Top 10 Biopharma ranks. To be fair, it doesn’t look like anyone else saw this big of a move coming (except perhaps for a Pfizer director whose broker sold a boatload of his Pfizer shares a few months before the Wyeth deal was announced).
The Lowe Down
So this is Wyeth’s last appearance in these ranks, locked as they now are in the clammy embrace of Pfizer. Hmm . . . maybe too much Edgar Allan Poe in there, but I wonder: People make nasty jokes about the productivity changes that seem to take place, post-Pfizerization, and we’ll have to watch this one to see if it breaks the trend or not. They’ve shown a willingness to go into some tricky areas in the past with their vaccine business and other deals (like their immunologic approach to Alzheimer’s). How much of this will carry over? Supposedly this deal will be different, which always makes me want to dig out the old press releases about how wonderful the earlier ones were. The company’s had a long run. When I joined the industry, it was American Home Products, and you could find a disaffected former researcher from its shop most anywhere you looked. Things have improved over the years, with many twists along the way, but the paths of glory lead but to . . . Pfizer? Well, good luck to the people there. We haven’t heard yet about the cuts to come, but coming they most certainly are.—Derek Lowe |
Why was I so sanguine about Wyeth’s productivity in biopharma? I suppose I was seduced by the growth rate of Enbrel, and the promise of Prevnar, the company’s pediatric vaccine that had a shot at becoming Wyeth’s #1 product in 2009. Last year, the company was developing its new 13-valent Prevnar, which was submitted to the FDA in March 2009 and received priority review status two months later. A few weeks before the deal with Pfizer was announced, Wyeth was in talks to acquire Crucell, a Dutch vaccine manufacturer that posted around $410 million in 2008 sales. Between that and its biologics pipeline, I continued to think Wyeth was in a position of strength. On the plus side, I wasn’t the only one who was impressed by Wyeth’s position in biologics.
Still, it turned out that I shouldn’t have just looked at Wyeth’s bio-vision of the future; I should’ve paid more attention to the traditional problems that pharma companies face: rapid deterioration of sales.
The (at risk) U.S. introduction of generic Protonix single-handedly made 2008 a wash for Wyeth. If you look over the company’s Top-Selling Drugs chart you can seethat the revenue growth for its big names — not including Alliance Revenue — adds up to around $1.3 billion. Protonix’s sales drop in 2008? A little more than $1.1 billion. With $154 million in net revenue growth from its top products, Wyeth was stuck running in place, and that’s not a great posture in today’s pharma world.
Still, Wyeth’s flat 2008 was better than its 1Q09, where the company posted an overall revenue drop of 6%. Pharma revenues fell at that same rate, driven by a 20% drop in sales of top-seller Effexor, which lost half of its international revenues to generic competition. In fact, of the net $275 million in lost 1Q09 revenues, $203 million came from Effexor’s decline.
Protonix sales actually rose 35% during the quarter, although part of that increase came from sales of Wyeth’s own generic version of the drug: total sales of Protonix in 1Q09 were $92 million for the branded version, and $123 million for the generic.
Wyeth also managed to bring in around $50 million in 1Q09 from its Effexor follow-up, Pristiq, after 2008 sales (beginning in April 2008) of $67 million. The company had hopes that Pristiq would help offset Effexor’s decline, but the drug ran into some bumps: Wyeth withdrew applications for Pristiq in Europe in 2008, and cancelled studies of the drug’s use against fibromyalgia late in the year. The company hopes to submit it to the FDA for use by menopausal women sometime in 2010.
Acquisition News
Target: Thiakis Ltd. Price: $30 million, with $120 in potential milestones Announced: December 2008 What they said: “Thiakis’ R&D program fits well with our goal of addressing the medical burden of obesity in a targeted manner using biologic-based therapies.”—Mikael Dolsten, M.D., Ph.D., president, Wyeth Research |
Maybe Pristiq just needs a helping hand! In March 2009, Impax Pharmaceuticals, the specialty brand products division of Impax Laboratories, announced that it would co-promote Pristiq starting in July. Impax will promote Pristiq as a treatment for adult patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) with its 66 neurology-focused sales force.
The companies entered a three-year co-promotion agreement to detail a Wyeth product-to-be-named-later for neurologists. Impax will receive a “fee for each detail delivered,” according to its press statement, but wouldn’t disclose any other terms of the agreement. Which makes sense, since the July 2008 agreement resulted from a patent infringement suit after Impax attempted to launch generic of Effexor XR.
Relying on Pristiq — a very similar (chemically speaking) drug to Effexor — to replace that drug’s revenues, was a gamble for Wyeth. But the company’s biggest R&D gamble is in Alzheimer’s disease, a notoriously tough field. In April 2009, the company and co-developer Elan disclosed bad news from a trial of bapineuzumab, their MAb treatment for the disease. Evidently, there were signs of brain swelling in some patients at higher doses of the drug. The problem is, the early Phase II results were so promising that the companies had already begun enrolling patients for Phase III trials. Enrollment had to be curtailed in some regions in Europe last October, and the companies ultimately concluded that patients who carry a certain version of a gene can’t receive the highest dose of the drug.
If that Alzheimer’s drug — or either of Wyeth’s two others in Phase II — manages to reach the market, its new owner is going to be very happy. If not, then it’s going to own some high-end biologics and vaccine expertise.