Teva Eyes 25 Percent of the $750 Million EpiPen Market by Year’s End

Teva Pharmaceutical is expecting big things from its generic EpiPen.

The company snagged approval for its generic version of Mylan’s EpiPen Auto-Injector in August 2018. Teva’s generic version of the EpiPen and EpiPen Jr. was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in adults and pediatric patients who weigh more than 33 pounds. The approval of Teva’s generic came at a time the nation has seen a shortage of the life-saving epinephrine injections due to manufacturing issues.

As the company rolls out its generic EpiPen, Teva Chief Executive Officer Kare Schultz has boldly predicted that his company’s drug will claim about 25 percent of the U.S. market by the end of the year, Reuters reported this morning. The U.S. market for EpiPen is worth roughly $750 million a year, Reuters reported.

As the company’s generic becomes more and more commonplace in U.S. pharmaceuticals, Schultz told Reuters that he believes Teva’s generic EpiPen could actually claim about 50 percent of the U.S. market share by 2020.

As a shortage of EpiPens continues, Schultz said that Teva will “be filling up the supply chain more and more over the coming months.” But so far, the rollout of the generic EpiPen has been a bit slow, Reuters said.

Those predictions Schultz made about the company’s generic EpiPen were welcome news to investors. Shares of Teva are up slightly after the company’s stock took a hit last week after it reported its most recent financial results. The Israel-based company is the largest generics maker in the world, but in the U.S., sales have declined significantly. As BioSpace reported last week, Teva’s annual revenues have dropped 16 percent since 2017, with adjusted earnings per share dropping 27 percent.

While Schultz is high on the potential of the generic EpiPen to stimulate some revenue in the United States, he also recognizes that the company’s future revenues hinge on new medicines. After releasing its annual report last week, Schultz said the company will begin to shift some of its energies toward the more lucrative biologics market. When that announcement was made, Schultz told the Wall Street Journal he expects eventually half the company’s revenues will come from biologics.

Teva’s EpiPen is the first generic version of the widely used EpiPen made by Mylan. The rising consumer cost of the branded EpiPen reached a national furor a few years ago when the price hit more than $600 for a two-pack of the life-saving epinephrine injector.

For Teva, it was a long road to receive approval of the EpiPen generic. In 2016 the FDA rejected Teva’s initial attempts at garnering approval for its generic version.

https://www.biospace.com/article/teva-eyes-25-percent-of-the-750-million-epipen-market-by-year-s-end/