Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd. (BHVN, Financial) recently shrugged off concerns about its lack of transparency on sales of its only commercial product after investors punished the company’s shares.
The Connecticut-based biopharma had been reporting revenues for its migraine drug Nurtec ODT regularly since the product hit the market in the fourth quarter of 2020, so investors became alarmed when the company recently halted its practice of issuing preliminary results, according to an article in Fierce Pharma. Jittery investors proceeded to take the stock down from $127 in early April to its current price of about $99. It had been as high as $151 in the past year. The company currently has a market cap of $7.42 billion.
Piper Sandler analyst Christopher Raymond wrote in an April 21 note that investors were concerned that the demand for the migraine drug might have dropped or that its net price was being squeezed. Seeking to allay skittish shareholders, the company told Fierce Pharma that its plan all along was to share unofficial earnings pre-announcements only early in the Nurtec launch.
“We previously communicated that in our first full year of launch (2021) we thought it was important to efficiently release our revenue numbers before our comprehensive earnings release but that would change in subsequent reporting periods,” Biohaven said.
Nurtec was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating acute migraines in February 2020. Last May, the medication was also okayed for preventive treatment of episodic migraines.
Nurtec prescriptions are up by 8% in the first quarter compared to the previous three months, according to analysts at SVB Leerink. Given that figure, Leerink boosted its sales estimate from $172 million to $180 million in the first quarter of 2022. The analysts said full-year sales should come in at $926 million, up $25 million from an earlier projection.
Biohaven is being pressured by AbbVie Inc.’s (ABBV, Financial) drug Qulipta, which was greenlighted by the FDA in September 2021 for treating episodic migraines. In March, the Chicago-area pharma giant announced positive results from a phase 3 clinical trial for the drug in chronic migraines. If eventually approved for that indication, Qulipta will have an important competitive advantage over Nuratec and other medications given the latter need to be injected while the AbbVie drug is taken by mouth.
To beef up its neurological offerings, in late February Biohaven inked a licensing pact to take over Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s (BMY, Financial) drug taldefgrobep alfa and target it against spinal muscular atrophy. Bristol had tested the drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy but it flopped in clinical trials. Before that, Biohaven had licensed a drug from AstraZeneca (AZN), but it also fell short in a study testing it for multiple system atrophy.
In January, Biohaven was among the companies listed as potential acquisitions by Biogen Inc. (BIIB), which had asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS, Financial) to put together a list of targets.
