Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) stock fell over 2.7% on Feb 5th, 2019 (Source: Google finance). The company has delivered the quarterly net income of $3 million, due to a large impairment charge related to discontinuation of a multiple myeloma cell therapy program from Kite Pharma, which was acquired by Gilead in 2017. That is compared with a net loss of $3.9 billion, a year earlier, when many large companies took charges related U.S. corporate tax reform.
GILD in the fourth quarter of FY 18 has reported the adjusted earnings per share of $1.44, missing the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted earnings per share by 26 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. The company had reported the adjusted revenue growth of 35.9 percent to $5.8 billion in the fourth quarter of FY 18. Fourth-quarter sales of Gilead’s HIV drugs rose to $4.1 billion from $3.4 billion. However, the sales of hepatitis C drugs fell sharply to $738 million from $1.5 billion a year earlier, as newer drugs from Gilead and others have cured many patients with the liver-damaging virus and rival products have seized market share amid the diminishing patient pool.
Gilead has been trying to offset lower sales of hepatitis C drugs that drove an earlier sales surge. The company, which has a strong HIV/AIDS franchise, paid about $11 billion in 2017 to buy one of one of the pioneering companies in a type of cancer treatment known as CAR-T that uses patients’ immune cells to fight cancer. But sales of its CAR-T therapy Yescarta have been meager, reaching $264 million in 2018, below analysts’ projected $271 million.
Meanwhile, Daniel O’Day, who most recently ran Roche Holding AG’s pharmaceuticals group, is slated to take over as Gilead’s CEO next month.
GILD has announced that the company’s Board of Directors has declared an increase of 11% in the company’s quarterly cash dividend, beginning in the first quarter of 2019. The increase will result in a quarterly dividend of $0.63 per share of common stock. The dividend is payable on March 28, 2019, to stockholders of record at the close of business on March 15, 2019.
GILD expects the pivotal liver disease trial results in the next few months, projects relatively flat full-year 2019 product sales of $21.3 billion to $21.8 billion. This is compared with analysts’ projected $21.83 billion, according to FactSet data.