It has been a busy week for pharma giants reporting their latest quarterly earnings and a lot of them have exceeded analysts’ estimates.
Novartis, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Biogen, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi all reported quarterly earning this week and all but one managed to outperform Wall Street total revenue expectations. But even in the case of Biogen, where its total revenue came in slightly below projections, its groundbreaking Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi did better than expected.
Here’s a breakdown of how drug sales at these companies faired in the most recent quarter of 2024.
📈 Novartis
Novartis sales rose 10% in the last three months ending March 31 to $11.8 billion, up from $10.8 billion in the same period the prior year. Its total revenue came in above a consensus estimate of $10.4 billion, according to FactSet.
Novarits stock was slightly up on Thursday to about $99.
📈 Merck
Merck’s’s total revenue rose 9% year over year to $15.7 billion in its first quarter, exceeding analysts’ expectations of $15.2 billion. Sales were primarily driven by the company’s blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda.
Sales of Keytruda soared 20% in the first quarter of the year to $6.9 billion, compared with $5.8 billion in the same period last year. It outperformed Wall Street analysts’ expectations of $6.7 billion
Merck’s stock jumped 3% to about $130 during Thursday morning trading.
📈 AstraZeneca
U.K.-based AstraZeneca blew past analysts’ predictions. Its total revenue in the first quarter reached $10.2 billion, almost $1 billion over Wall Street estimates of $9.5 billion.
Its stock rose 6% to about $75 on Thursday following its latest quarterly earnings report.
📈 Sanofi
Sanofi also beat expectations when it reported $10.9 billion in sales for its first quarter, just above a consensus estimate of $10.7 billion, according to FactSet.
Sanofi stock is up 6% to about $49.
📉 Bristol-Myers Squibb
Bristol-Myers’s total revenue in the first quarter grew 4% year over year to $11.8 billion, from $11.3 billion. It outperformed Wall Street estimates of $11.4 billion.
Despite this, the company’s stock dropped 8% to $45 on Thursday.
📉 Biogen
Although Biogen did not meet total revenue expectations, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company reported higher than expected sales of its groundbreaking Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi.
Leqembi generated $19 million in the first quarter of 2024, outperforming analyst expectations of $11 million, according to FactSet. That figure is more than triple the amount of sales the drug generated in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The company’s total revenue fell 7% year over year to $2.29 billion in its first quarter, from $2.5 billion. It was slightly below expectations of $2.3 billion.
Biogen’s stock fell 1% to $199 on Thursday.