AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

If you think about your comments that you have — that you heard yesterday or the day before, that’s a very different dynamic. I mean, if you’re not that different or you have the same efficacy as a Humira, it’s not going to go that well on some of these formularies. And so I think you got to take a step back and look at the fundamental distinctiveness that we have on both Skyrizi and Rinvoq. And I think my last comment would be, let’s take Reno, which is growing very fast, 60%, okay? All of that is in the second-line plus setting. So from a strategic standpoint, it’s already stepped. And so when you take a look at those dynamics, we remain quite confident that as we rely on the power of raising the standard of care, that will help us navigate any of these scenarios, whether it’s related to obesity or not.

Operator: Next question comes from Vamil Divan with Guggenheim Securities.

Vamil Divan : I mean, transit right now. But the two questions I have actually, one is maybe building on Terence’s question around business development base in the pipeline. I think we get a lot of other questions just around sort of the underappreciated assets within your pipeline. I don’t know if you can maybe just comment on that. I know there’s a couple of assets that you plan out things people are overlooking where they might be some underappreciated upside? And then the second one is just on the charge you took today or this quarter on Imbruvica regarding the Medicare drug pricing program. And obviously, I understand why you did. I’m curious on the amount and the timing of why you’re doing now, I suppose I may be willing to see how the losses play out or negotiation process plays out.

And then in terms of the amount or how you — what your assumptions were that you can share on the competitive dynamics for sort of what you’re assuming around the impact this program would have on the pricing of Imbruvica…?

Rick Gonzalez : Divan, this is Rick. I’ll take the first question, and then Scott will take the second question. So on the pipeline, I think as I look at the pipeline and how we built the pipeline and how it’s playing out, I think — I don’t know that I would call it underappreciated because you don’t necessarily have access to all the data that we have on some of these programs. But we obviously invested significantly over the last several years in rapidly developing the indications for Rinvoq and Skyrizi and a lot of our focus had been built around that. But in parallel, we were advancing a number of other programs along the way. And I would say the investment that we made on Skyrizi and Rinvoq are pretty clear the kind of return that we are getting for those assets.

I mean, they’re growing at a phenomenal rate. In fact, in the not-too-distant future, the combination of those two products on a running rate basis will be larger than Humira, to give you some idea of how rapidly those products are growing and how large they are. But if I look at our pipeline, the real meaningful programs that we have in our pipeline that will be true needle movers for the company, there are several of them that are advancing now I think we have a high level of confidence in 400, our topo warhead platform with our c-Met version of that, we’re seeing very encouraging data in CRC. We’ll follow that with non-small cell lung cancer. And that platform is demonstrating to us that it is a broad-based platform that we can expand to a number of other areas.

And that should be a fairly significant opportunity for us going forward. Later sort of the ’27, ’28 timeframe, I think it’s going well have meaningful benefit play through. And then I’d say the second one is 383, our BCMA bispecific. As we indicated earlier, we’re seeing more and more data out of that program that clearly tells us this has a best-in-class profile, high levels of efficacy and very good safety and very convenient dosing. We think it has that ideal profile to be able to enter this market. And as you know, multiple myeloma is a very large market. There are very significant products in this market. So those are two opportunities. I would obviously say, $16 million. And some of our TA programs are also exciting programs that are running in parallel to these.

We’ll be getting more data on those next year. And I think those have significant opportunities as well. The third program I talked about is in our eye care business. It’s our REGENXBIO program for both wet AMD and diabetic retinopathy. We’re seeing some very, very encouraging data out of that program, and that could be a nice opportunity for us as well, and it continues to advance. So there are a number of important programs that you’ll start to see more and more data as we go through ’24 and into ’25 that I think will give the market an opportunity to be able to better assess those.

Scott Reents: Vam, this is Scott. With respect to your question on the Imbruvica charge. So I think a couple of things. As we have signaled in some of our regulatory filings, our last 10-Q, for instance, we had indicated that if we were to be selected in the negotiation process under the Inflation Reduction Act, that there would likely trigger an impairment. And so we had anticipated that this would be happy. And so the timing really relates to the fact that under the rules, you have to look at the fair value of that intangible asset with respect to future cash flows. And so the accounting rules would require that we would make that analysis upon selection as we had kind of previewed in our filings. And so we went through the process under that triggering event to determine what the impairment should be.