Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ: CELG) stock surged over 1.9% on May 5th, 2018 (as of 2:40 PM GMT-4; Source: Google finance). The group has $4.74 billion in cash and marketable securities.= and deployed over $10 billion to acquire two major late-stage pipeline companies, Impact Biomedicines and Juno Therapeutics. Therefore they issued $4.5 billion of debt. The group purchased $2.7 billion of shares during the quarter leading to a total share repurchases over the last two quarters to $5.7 billion. The group also reauthorized $5 billion for the share repurchase program, of which over $3.1 billion remains outstanding as of March 31.
The group’s Net product sales rose 20% on a year over year basis to $3.5 billion boosted by ongoing volume growth with 15.5 of the total 19.6 percentage points of revenue growth coming from volume. Major contribution from the major brands REVLIMID, POMALYST, OTEZLA, and ABRAXANE. Nadim and Terrie drove the performance.
Adjusted EPS rose 23% against the last year with momentum driving Q1 earnings over those of Q4 last year. Starting in 2019, the group sees that the hematology products developmental stage has the potential to incrementally add top line sales. Their fedratinib and JCAR017 launches in 2019 would enable them to absorb the financial impact caused by the delay in the forecasted launch of ozanimod. For 2020, the revenue is expected to be in the range of $19 billion to $20 billion while adjusted diluted EPS is forecasted to be greater than $12.50. Ozanimod is a major priority for the group and had productive interactions with U.S. and European regulators to resubmit the U.S. NDA and submit the European MAA for MS in the first quarter of 2019
OTEZLA reported a solid quarter with worldwide sales rising 46% yoy to $353 million, boosted by sales as well as volume. OTEZLA sales performance is driven by volume growth on the back of better demand and improving access pull-through in contracted health plans. OTEZLA international sales rose 79% boosted by better adoption in key ex U.S. markets.