Azenta Inc. reports fiscal Q4 2025 results with non-GAAP EPS $0.09 (+12% YoY) and revenue $148.6M (+1% YoY), missing EPS but beating revenue estimates, and also reports fiscal Q1 2026 results while issuing full-year 2026 guidance for continuing operations.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026
AbbVie Pummeled After Delivering A Fourth-Quarter Beat — On The Back Of Humira
Investors pummeled AbbVie (ABBV) stock Wednesday after the company delivered a fourth-quarter sales beat that came largely on the back of still-declining Humira sales.
Once key to AbbVie's top line, Humira sales have now spent years under biosimilar pressure, forcing AbbVie to turn to its other immunology drugs for renewed growth. But Humira sales beat expectations by 29%, or $282 million, "contributing the vast majority of revenue upside," Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger said in a report.
That's not a good look considering Rinvoq sales came in light and Skyrizi just barely beat forecasts.
"We expect a negative stock reaction for ABBV upon market open despite the slight beat that was unusually driven by a large beat in US Humira, while the usual AbbVie 'beaters' and growth drivers reported marginally lower (Rinvoq) to slightly better (Skyrizi) revenues," BNP Paribas analyst Navann Ty said in a client note.
AbbVie stock slumped more than 6% to 210.85 in morning trading. Shares undercut the lower boundary of a flat base with a buy point at 244.81, according to MarketSurge.
Abbvie Stock: Sales Worries
In total, AbbVie reported adjusted earnings of $2.71 a share and $16.62 billion in sales. Both topped analysts' forecast for $2.65 and $16.41 billion, respectively. Earnings grew more than 25% as sales rose 10%. Operationally, sales climbed 9.5%.
Skyrizi sales ramped more than 18% to $5.01 billion, beating expectations for $4.88 billion. But, while Rinvoq sales rocketed 29.5% to $2.37 billion, they completely missed forecasts for $2.39 billion, according to FactSet. Humira helped offset that, bringing in $1.25 billion vs. analysts' call for $1.03 billion. But Humira sales continued their downfall, sliding 26%.
Beyond the immunology drugs, neuroscience performed in line with expectations. Botox, which can be used to treat migraines and excessive sweating, grew 13% year over year. Sales of Vraylar, an antipsychotic, increased 11%, William Blair analyst Matt Phipps said in a report.
On the aesthetics side, Botox Cosmetic and Juvederm sales were in line with forecasts. But revenue from Juvederm, a skin filler, continued to decline, falling 11% year over year. Botox Cosmetic edged up 4%.
Solid Earnings
BNP's Ty reiterated a neutral rating on AbbVie stock "given the oncology & immunology pipeline catalysts in 2026E, offset by the slower Aesthetics recovery and impact of the IRA, as well as a fair valuation." Under the IRA, or the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare can negotiate the prices of a bucket of high-priced drugs every year. AbbVie's Botox and Botox Cosmetic are both on the list this year.
Leerink's Risinger noted AbbVie is running two final-phase tests for Rinvoq and another drug called lutikizumab in hidradenitis suppurativa. Hidradenitis suppurativa, or HS, is a skin condition. The company is also testing Skyrizi in Crohn's disease.
He rates AbbVie stock an outperform.
For the year, AbbVie guided to adjusted earnings of $14.37 to $14.57 per share. The lower end of the guidance beat expectations by 10 cents per share, William Blair's Phipps said.
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/abbvie-stock-abbvie-earnings-q4-2025/
Evogene unit Biomica grants Shanghai Lishan Biopharm exclusive world license for oncology candidate
BMC128, with Biomica eligible for development milestones and sales royalties
InnovAge raising full-year 2026 guidance and reiterating its ending census outlook
Q4 2025 results with non-GAAP EPS $0.08 (+180% YoY) and revenue $239.7M (+15% YoY), beating estimates; also reports Q2 2026 results
- Center-level contribution margin rose to 22% of revenue, +430 bps YoY on cost discipline.
- Medicaid and Medicare capitation rates and V28 impact better than initially forecast.
- Full-year FY26 guidance raised for revenue to $925–950M, EBITDA to $70–75M; census unchanged.
- Key risk: softer Q3 from flu, seasonality, and ongoing Medicaid redetermination execution.
- External provider cost per participant down YoY on lower nursing facility and pharmacy costs.
Rare Pediatric Disease Vouchers Reauthorized, PBM Reform Funded in Narrowly Passed Spending Bill
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a spending package into law Tuesday that reauthorizes the FDA’s previously stalled rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program, among other initiatives, while ending a three-day partial government shutdown.
President Donald Trump signed a pared down spending bill on Tuesday that will end a partial government shutdown—and a long year of uncertainty for rare disease drug developers. The FDA’s rare pediatric disease priority review voucher program, which lapsed at the end of 2024, was reauthorized in the legislation.
The vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, upon which the legislation hinged, could scarcely have been tighter at 217-214. The continuing resolution is a stopgap measure that separates funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from funding for other government divisions. The vote came after Trump and Senate Democrats reached the new deal last week.
For biopharma companies, specifically those developing therapies for rare diseases, Tuesday’s vote ends a long fight to reauthorize the rare pediatric priority review voucher (PRV) program—through a bill known as the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act—after Congress failed to re-up the program over a year ago.
The program, which began in 2012, provides a PRV to a company or other drug sponsor upon approval of a rare disease therapy. Companies can use the PRV to expedite the drug review timeline for another product, down to around six months from the usual 12 months, or they can also sell the voucher to gain much-needed revenue in a space that often doesn’t quite fit the typical pharmaceutical revenue model. PRVs go for around $150 million or more.
More than $4 billion in reinvestment dollars would have been left on the table if the bill had failed to pass in this legislative round, Stacey Frisk, executive director of the Rare Disease Company Coalition (RDCC), told BioSpace last month.
“This milestone brings renewed hope to families awaiting lifesaving treatments for children with rare diseases and reaffirms a bipartisan commitment to advancing innovation for pediatric patients who urgently need therapeutic breakthroughs,” Frisk said in an email statement to BioSpace on Tuesday. She added that the PRV program has already helped enable therapies across 47 rare pediatric indications.
The newly approved spending bill also allows for a $400 million increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health, which “sends a clear signal that Congress recognizes the essential role federal research investment plays in driving discovery and, ultimately, delivering cures,” Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council said in a statement, also sent to BioSpace Tuesday evening.
“We are also encouraged to see Congress act on PBM reform and the reauthorization of the Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher, which incentivizes the development of treatments for children facing the rarest and most devastating diseases,” O’Connell added.
With regard to PBM reform, the new legislation provides the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with $190 million to ensure these pharmaceutical “middlemen” comply with several new provisions, Endpoints News reported Tuesday. These include allowing CMS to define and enforce “reasonable and relevant” Medicare Part D contract terms and increasing transparency by allowing CMS to track payment trends to pharmacies and pharmacy inclusion in PBM networks.
PBM reform is a core tenet of President Donald Trump’s Most Favored Nation drug pricing scheme. “We’re going to cut out the middlemen and facilitate the direct sale of drugs at the most favored nation price directly to the American citizen,” the president said during the signing of an executive order related to the program in May.
Now, Democrats and Republicans will spend the next two weeks working to hammer out an agreement on the hot-button issue of immigration reform.
Amgen Will Not Heed FDA Request To Withdraw Rare Disease Drug Tavneos
After review, Amgen is certain that Tavneos is effective and has a favorable benefit-risk profile. The company informed the FDA on January 28 that they would not pull the drug.
Amgen will not yield to a request from the FDA to pull the rare autoimmune disorder drug Tavneos from the market.
Executives stood behind the therapy, which came to the company through the $3.7 billion acquisition of ChemoCentryx in 2022, on Amgen’s fourth quarter and full year earnings call Tuesday. The drug was approved to treat ANCA-associated vasculitis in 2021.
“We remain confident that Tavneos is an important and effective medicine based on clinical data, real-world evidence and its favorable benefit risk profile,” Murdo Gordon, executive VP for global commercial operations, said on the call.
Amgen explained in a Tuesday press release that the FDA had on January 16 asked Amgen to yank the drug from the market due to concerns about how ChemoCentryx re-adjudicated the primary endpoint results for nine out of 331 patients in the pivotal trial that underpinned the drug’s approval.
“We were surprised by this,” James Bradner, executive VP of research and development, admitted on the call.
But after review, Amgen is certain that Tavneos is effective and has a favorable benefit-risk profile. The company informed the FDA on January 28 that they would not pull the drug.
Although the FDA action against Tavneos came as a surprise for those on the call, analysts seemed unfazed.
“We view Tavneos as a small contributor, non-core to the long-term story,” Truist Securities wrote on Tuesday night.
Executives were fairly mum on what comes next, besides saying that they are working with the FDA.
The FDA has the authority to force a company to remove a drug from the market but the first step is typically to request a voluntary recall. If a drugmaker refuses, the agency can seek court orders and injunctions to force the matter.
ANCA-associated vasculitis is a rare group of disorders that cause inflammation in the blood vessels, leading to organ damage. Prior to the approval of Tavneos, patients underwent chemotherapy and long-term steroid use, which can cause serious complications such as mood disorders, immune suppression and others, Bradner explained.
“And then enter Tavneos,” he said. Testing in the Phase III ADVOCATE study showed that patients could avoid steroids and achieve sustained remission out to 52 weeks when added to the initial round of chemotherapy.
“We’re in discussions with FDA, and we’ll answer questions as we talk with them,” Bradner noted.
Amgen is continuing to enroll a Phase III trial for patients 6–18 years old with ANCA-associated vasculitis, according to the earnings release.
Tavneos brought in $152 million for the fourth quarter and $459 million for all of 2025, representing about 1.2% of Amgen’s revenue, Leerink Partners wrote in a Tuesday evening note. Truist expects Tavneos to achieve about $600 million in sales for 2026 and peak at $1.2 billion in 2031.
The drug is also under review in Europe over concerns about the clinical data used to secure approval.
“The concerns relate to how the data for the Advocate study was handled before Tavneos was authorised, which may have impacted the findings on the medicine’s effectiveness,” the European Medicines Agency wrote in a January 30 press release.
https://www.biospace.com/fda/amgen-will-not-heed-fda-request-to-withdraw-rare-disease-drug-tavneos
Novartis Sticks With M&A Strategy of Building Early Pipeline, Searching for Near-Launches
Novartis will still be on the lookout for early-stage deals under $2 billion, and later-stage agreements around a product that could reach the market within five years, CEO Vas Narasimhan said Wednesday.
After back-to-back-to-back big-ticket acquisitions in 2025, Novartis appears to have no plans to slow down. CEO Vas Narasimhan told reporters Wednesday that the pharma’s dealmaking strategy will remain largely the same in 2026, with the goal of beefing up both its early- and late-stage pipelines.
“There’s really no change in our M&A strategy,” Narasimhan said Wednesday morning during a media call to present the pharma’s 2025 earnings results. “We’ve been really consistent in wanting to build out our early-stage pipeline” with deals in the “sub-$2-billion range.”
At the same time, Novartis is also on the lookout to “bring in medicines that could launch in the next five years,” Narasimhan added. To this end, he pointed out, the pharma has taken several major steps: Last October, the company acquired Avidity Biosciences for approximately $12 billion in an agreement that would turn out to be one of 2025’s largest.
The previous month, the pharma made a $1.4 billion bet to swallow Tourmaline Bio, which followed a $3.1 billion play in February 2025 to absorb the privately held Anthos Therapeutics. All three of these acquisitions gave Novartis a clutch of mid- to late-stage assets to advance to the market.
In between these buyouts, Novartis also inked a flurry of agreements for earlier-stage assets. These include a $5.7 billion deal with Monte Rosa to develop molecular glue degraders, a $1.7 billion AI-heavy contract with Relation to design drugs for atopic dermatitis and a $1.5 billion partnership with China’s SciNeuro for an anti-amyloid antibody for Alzheimer’s disease.
“We really don’t look at the size of the deal,” Narasimhan told reporters. Instead, the company is focused on how a particular asset or company fits into its overall pipeline strategy.
Novartis’ net sales in 2025 grew 8% year-on-year at constant currencies, exceeding $54.5 billion. The pharma’s best-selling product was the heart failure drug Entresto, which brought in nearly $7.75 billion in 2025—though this represented a 2% decrease from the same period the year prior.
Growth was mainly driven by the breast cancer therapy Kisqali, which jumped 57% year-on-year to earn $4.78 billion, and the prostate cancer radioconjugate Pluvicto, which made $1.99 billion, a 42% increase. Scemblix, approved for the treatment of certain types of chronic myeloid leukemia, surged 85% to hit 2025 sales of $1.29 billion.
Novartis forecasts continued stability and growth for 2026, with net sales anticipated to increase by a low-single-digit percentage.
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