Even with Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)-related pressure looming for its top product, Teva Pharmaceuticals is continuing to deliver on the “Pivot to Growth” strategy CEO Richard Francis had envisioned for the once-struggling company when he took the helm in 2023.
This year’s third quarter marked Teva’s 11th consecutive quarter of sales growth, a testament to the company’s plan to lean on its trio of innovative drugs. Those three primary growth drivers are Austedo for Huntington’s disease and tardive dyskinesia (TD), Ajovy for migraine prevention and schizophrenia med Uzedy.
In the most recent quarter, the three drugs generated $830 million in quarterly sales, good for 33% year-over-year growth. In all, Teva pulled down $4.5 billion during the period.
“Our differentiated innovative portfolio is now a defining strength for Teva as we transform into a leading innovative biopharma, while our world-class generics business continues to provide a resilient foundation,” Francis commented in a company press release.
Although Austedo, Teva’s top-selling medicine, is up for an IRA-mandated price change in 2027, the company still holds firm in its $2.5 billion revenue target for the med in 2027. Teva’s confidence is buoyed by its belief the TD market remains underserved, the company explained in its earnings presentation (PDF) Wednesday.
The company and the U.S. government worked out a yet-to-be announced maximum fair Medicare price for Austedo during the third quarter, which was “in line” with previous expectations, Francis said on a call with investors.
Teva remains confident in Austedo’s growth path, as demonstrated by its revised revenue expectations for the drug in 2025. The company added $50 million to its forecast for the year, bringing the drug's sales projection to between $2.05 billion and $2.15 billion.
“I would like to remind everyone that tardive dyskinesia remains a highly underdiagnosed and undertreated condition,” Francis pointed out on the call. “85% of patients who suffer from this condition are not on therapy. And so we see a great opportunity to help those patients.”
While the large untreated TD patient population means there is room to grow the brand, it’s also a “tragedy,” Francis explained in an interview with Fierce Pharma. The CEO attributes the untapped market to the relativity new availability of treatments for the disease. Patients may remain unaware that a treatment exists, while some physicians may not be making diagnoses for similar reasons, he said.
To spread the word, the company is looking to drive awareness through physician education and campaigns aimed at patients and caregivers. Teva plans to continue these efforts “until we’ve helped every potential patient that we could possibly help,” Francis said in the interview.
Meanwhile, Uzedy’s $43 million in quarterly revenues sets the stage for Teva’s anticipated 2026 launch of its olanzapine LAI, a long-acting version of Eli Lilly's schizophrenia drug Zyprexa. The company expects the long-acting option and Uzedy together will deliver up to $2 billion in peak sales. The company figures its existing capabilities in schizophrenia, combined with the forthcoming launch, make for a “best-in-class” schizophrenia franchise, it said in its presentation.
Rounding out Teva’s innovative drug portfolio, Ajovy delivered quarterly revenues of $168 million. The drug in August expanded its U.S. reach to the pediatric population, making it the first calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) antagonist that can prevent episodic migraines in both children and adults.
Biosimilar boosts
While Austedo, Uzedy and Ajovy are focal points in Teva’s “Pivot to Growth” strategy, the company has not left its legacy generics business behind. Sales in the generic sector rose 7% during the quarter compared to the same period a year ago, bringing in $1.8 billion on the back of higher biosimilar revenues.
Teva remains an active player in the biosimilars drug space and has launched “the most” biosimilars in the field since 2020, it says.
The company and other biosimilar makers navigate a complex regulatory path to market their products, which the FDA is now looking at changing with new draft guidance aimed at reducing clinical testing burdens for biosimilars. Further, the FDA has said it intends to categorize all approved biosims as “interchangeable” so pharmacists can freely substitute them with reference drugs.
Francis is hopeful that the move will make for a more sustainable biosimilar market and allow more patients to benefit, he told Fierce Pharma.
For Teva, the FDA’s guidance is “the right thing to do,” Francis noted on the investor call, adding that it doesn’t change the company’s strategy in terms of biosimilars.
API sale
To keep the focus on innovative drugs as well as the company’s powerhouse generics business, Teva last year revealed a plan to sell off its small molecule API business, dubbed TAPI. At the time, the divestiture was expected to wrap by the first half of 2025.
While the company hasn’t yet shaken off the business unit, it’s now renewing its efforts to do so after pulling the plug on exclusive discussions with the buyer it had previously selected, Teva revealed in its earnings presentation.
The terms the buyer brought to the table “did not meet Teva’s strategic and financial objectives,” the company said. The update is a recent development in the negotiations and a turnaround from late September’s announcement that the TAPI sale was in “advanced discussions."
TAPI, as a large API supplier, is not a “business on the shelf” but will instead be a strategic asset for Teva going forward, Chief Financial Officer Eli Kalif explained on the call.
With the unit back on the market, TAPI could be enticing to potential buyers due to recent trade policies, market conditions and “recent geopolitical developments,” the company pointed out in its presentation, prompting a revised strategic review as it weighs its options going forward.
In the wake of Teva's third-quarter results announcement and conference call, the company's share price has climbed more than 20% on Wednesday.