Cardinal Health (CAH) reported a fiscal Q3 non-GAAP EPS of $2.35, exceeding expectations by $0.20. However, revenue came in at $54.9 billion, falling short by $410 million. Despite this, the company has raised its fiscal 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance to $8.05-$8.15, indicating confidence in future growth prospects.
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/2819757/cardinal-health-cah-boosts-fiscal-2025-eps-guidance
Federal court allows Medicare overcharge case against Regeneron over Eylea pricing to proceed.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4439203-regeneron-ordered-face-lawsuit-alleging-medicare-fraud-eylea
After seeing its spending soar and net loss grow to over $90 million in the first quarter, Phathom Pharmaceuticals is making cost-cutting moves—including significant changes to its marketing department.
The reorg is aimed at making Phathom profitable by 2026, without requiring additional equity or debt financing, CEO Steve Basta said in Thursday’s earnings release, adding, “2025 will be an inflection point for Phathom.”
Among the changes is the announcement that Martin Gilligan, chief commercial officer, will “transition out of Phathom in the coming weeks,” alongside the company’s chief operating officer and chief financial and business officer.
Gilligan joined Phathom as CCO in early 2020, following stints in the commercial organizations of Celgene, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and more.
In the wake of Gilligan’s departure, Phathom’s marketing and market access leaders will report directly to the CEO. Meanwhile, the company has tapped Jonathan Bentley, former VP of sales at the newly J&J-acquired Intra-Cellular Therapies, to serve as head of sales, putting him in charge of a team comprising “approximately 75% of Phathom’s workforce,” per the release.
Outside of the C-suite, Phathom said it will cut its overall headcount by about 6%. According to its most recently available annual report, as of early 2024, the company counted 452 full-time employees; if that headcount has stayed relatively stable in the months since, the cuts could therefore affect around 30 staffers.
In another bid to cut costs, Phathom said Thursday that it will “reduce investment in direct-to-consumer (DTC) promotion, primarily broadcast and cable advertising”—a sharp U-turn from just two months ago, when the company said in its full-year earnings release that it planned “to further expand its DTC efforts with continued investment.”
Phathom reported general and administrative expenses of $94.5 million for the first quarter of this year, up more than 52% year over year. It attributed the increase to “higher advertising and promotional expenses in support of our commercial launch of VOQUEZNA products.”
The plan to slash investment in DTC advertising comes close on the heels of the launch of Phathom’s latest campaign for GERD medication Voquezna. The new promos star “Saturday Night Live” mainstay Kenan Thompson, and Gilligan recently told Fierce Pharma Marketing in an interview that the campaign was set to appear across broadcast and connected TV, on social media and in doctor’s office waiting rooms.
In addition to cutting DTC spend, Phathom will also “suspend, defer, or slow” several of its ongoing clinical development programs, including a pause on the phase 2 trial of Voquezna in eosinophilic esophagitis, and make “meaningful reductions” after reviewing third-party contracts and vendor costs.
“In today’s challenging public market environment, marked by constrained access to capital and broader macroeconomic headwinds, companies must be more selective and strategic than ever in how they deploy their resources,” Basta said in Thursday’s release. “We are focused on initiatives that deliver the greatest return, with our most valuable investment being the daily efforts of our sales organization. We’ve preserved sales force strength while scaling back in areas that deliver less near-term value.”
In the first quarter, Phathom raked in net revenues of $28.5 million, compared to just $1.9 million during the same period a year ago, shortly after Voquezna’s late 2023 launch. Filled prescriptions grew to more than 390,000 as of April 18, representing growth of around 30% from the company’s last earnings report.
Phathom’s net loss, meanwhile, clocked in at $94.3 million for the quarter, up from $82.9 million a year before.
All together, the newly announced cuts are expected to reduce the drugmaker’s full-year operating expenses by between $60 million and $70 million.
As of the end of March, Phathom said it had $212.3 million cash on hand. Between that, its estimated future product revenues and the cost-cutting plan, the company said it “believes these resources will be sufficient to fund operations and enable Phathom to achieve profit from operations, excluding stock-based compensation, in 2026.”
Tens of thousands of New York City residents have fled the Northeast for warmer climes in a five-year period — taking nearly $14 billion worth of income out of the Empire State.
A new report by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission found around 30,000 Big Apple dwellers moved to Florida between 2017 and 2022, many of them ending up in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
The city has seen a reduction in its adjusted gross income of $9.2 billion from relocations to those two counties alone, and a total of $13.8 billion when accounting for thousands more who moved to other parts of the Sunshine State.
The report chalked up the mass migration to factors including lingering effects of the pandemic, as well as general affordability, quality-of-life concerns and safety.
“Simply put, though, some people found the value proposition of other places to be higher than New York City,” CBC president Andrew Rein told the New York Sun.
Florida isn’t the only locale gaining income as residents flee New York City.
Long Island increased its population by some 138,000 NYC expats during that same five-year period, resulting in another $11.1 billion drop in adjusted gross income for the city.
Some 60,000 ex-city dwellers also moved to Westchester County in that time, depriving the city of another $5 billion worth of income.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/01/us-news/14b-in-income-left-nyc-as-residents-fled-to-florida/
The Trump administration will cut $1 billion in school mental health grants, citing misuse of the funds for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives rather than direct student support, the Hill reported.
The administration announced it would not renew $1 billion in federal funding intended to support mental health services in schools, arguing that the money has been misused to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion — or DEI — efforts that fall outside the program’s purpose.
The funding, originally established under a bipartisan gun violence prevention law signed by former President Joe Biden, was designed to help schools hire mental health professionals and counselors. However, officials in the Department of Education say grant recipients have instead used the money to pursue what they describe as race-based staffing initiatives.
“These grants are intended to improve American students’ mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses. Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help,” said Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department.
“We owe it to American families to ensure that tax-payer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health,” she added.
Conservative activist Christopher Rufo first reported the funding cuts on the social platform X, where he published excerpts of grant documents detailing race-conscious hiring goals. “The grants were being used to advance left-wing racialism and discrimination,” Rufo wrote. “No more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health.”
A notice obtained by The Associated Press and sent to members of Congress said the Education Department “plans to re-envision and re-compete its mental health program funds to more effectively support students’ behavioral health needs.”
The decision comes amid broader efforts by the Education Department to scale back federal education funding, which it says has been improperly influenced by DEI priorities. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the agency’s decision to block millions in grants for teacher preparation programs that contained what officials deemed inappropriate DEI elements.
The shift in funding strategy comes at a time when youth mental health remains a pressing concern.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in six U.S. youth aged 6 to 17 experiences a mental health disorder annually, and half of all mental health conditions begin by age 14. The most common diagnoses in children include ADHD, behavior disorders, anxiety, and depression.
Despite these statistics, roughly half of the affected youth receive no treatment.
Schools play a critical role in closing that gap: a 2019 report found that 15% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 received mental health services at school, nearly matching the 17% who saw a specialist provider.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/donald-trump-mental-health-dei/2025/04/30/id/1209019/
The U.S House of Representatives voted Thursday to bar California's landmark plan to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles by 2035 that has been adopted by 11 other states.
The House backed legislation to repeal a waiver granted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under former President Joe Biden in December allowing California to mandate at least 80% electric vehicles by 2035. Major automakers had urged the action saying the rules are not feasible, while California says the rules are essential to cutting pollution.
https://www.aol.com/news/us-house-votes-bar-california-144746491.html
U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, will be leaving their posts, sources briefed on the matter said on Thursday, in the first big shakeup of Trump's inner circle since he took office in January.
A 51-year-old former Republican lawmaker from Florida, Waltz took criticism inside the White House when he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides.
It was not immediately clear who would take over from Waltz, but one option included U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in both Russia-Ukraine diplomacy as well as the Middle East, a second source said.
https://www.aol.com/news/white-house-national-security-adviser-145636802.html
