Good Week for Gilead’s Hepatitis-C Treatments, UBS Says

UBS strategist Matthew Roden and team note that it was another good week Gilead Sciences’ (GILD) hepatitis-C treatments:

AP

Scripts for Gilead’s Harvoni during the week ending November 14 were released today with total scripts of 3,606, up +37% w/w. These data are strong in the context of feedback at AASLD that Harvoni Rx are being denied. This implies a total franchise new Rx (i.e. Sovaldi + Harvoni) of 7,424, up 13.4% w/w. For comparison, in its third full week (week ending Jan. 10th), Sovaldi scripts totalled 1,764, and mid-January scripts were 2,500-2,900. Current Bloomberg consensus for 4Q Harvoni sales is $1.8bn…

Scripts for Sovaldi totalled 3,818, down -2% from last week. New Rx were 1,079, down -3% w/w. As expected, the trend continues to reflect a shift to Harvoni for new patient starts following the launch on Oct 13. A total of 28,231 scripts and 9,090 new scripts have been recorded in 4Q. We are tracking to $1.04bn for 4Q Sovaldi sales based on script data (current Bloomberg consensus for 4Q WW sales is $3.2bn, post-earnings FOA consensus for US sales is $1.5bn, and we model $3.1bn HCV sales in the US). We assume 95% complete therapy (97.5% refill in months 2 and 3 each), a 12% gross-to-net pricing (more conservative than Gilead comments imply), a correction factor suggested by scripts vs. reported sales, and 10% of NRx are actually refills.

RBC’s Michael Yee thinks Gilead’s on track to meet Harvoni sales estimates:

Harvoni’s week 5 NRx is tracking in line with our estimates in our Harvoni-APP and towards Q4 consensus of $3B USA. Note, the NRx this week, even though in line with our projection, may have been impacted by the AASLD Liver meeting that ended last Tues as many prescribers (hepatologists, gastroenterologists) were away at the conference.

We believe total Harvoni+Sovaldi franchise TRx needs to maintain current momentum towards Q2:14 totals to reach Q4:14 WW cons of ~$3.7B and 2015E US consensus of $12B.

We are looking for combined TRx to rise towards 8000+ through Thanksgiving and further towards 9000+ TRx in December in order to get to a comfortable run-rate during Q1:15.

Shares of Gilead Sciences have ticked up 0.2% to $100.76 at 1:05 p.m. today.