A Quarterly Report Of Transnational Pharmaceutical Companies Under The Epidemic: Roche Won A Revenue Championship, Clinical Trials Generally Postponed

Under the global epidemic, medical health at epidemic centers is considered one of the least affected industries, and even to some extent, it has been benefited. In the first four months of 2020, in addition to making efforts to return to the right track, the pharmaceutical industry was also responsible for finding therapeutic drugs to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, developing vaccines and ensuring regular use of drugs.

The performance and stock price rise of large pharmaceutical companies in the first quarter corresponded to industry dynamics and market expectations. On the one hand, from the company's performance in the first quarter of 2020, the revenue growth of multinational pharmaceutical companies is still growing, with two digit growth. Roche is more than former "big brother" Pfizer and won the sales champion. On the other hand, under the slowing economic growth, most of the top 20 innovative pharmaceutical companies in the world dropped in the first quarter, and overall fell by nearly 8%.

Pharmaceutical companies related to epidemic drugs have direct benefits, such as Gillie and regenerated yuan. Because of the epidemic, the growth of long-term customers and the conversion of some patients to long prescriptions have indirectly contributed to the growth of performance. Governments and enterprises all over the world have invested a lot of time, resources and funds to find treatment methods. Large and innovative enterprises that have the ability to compete with drugs or vaccines at this time may also have long-term benefits.

However, the secondary effects of the epidemic are also emerging. The delay in clinical trials is secondary to the delay in routine visits and admission to hospitals. How to layout the next drug development and listing is the next step for pharmaceutical companies to think about.

Alternation of seats

As of April 29th, among the multinational pharmaceutical companies that had released the first quarter results in 2020, Roche won the championship by 15 billion 200 million US dollars, up 7% over the same period last year. Not surprisingly, the first three of the first quarter were Roche, Novartis and Mercedes, and Pfizer fell to fourth.

Roche said the outbreak of new crown pneumonia was volatile in some markets, but had limited impact on its first quarter performance, and Roche's global drug and testing supply chain remained normal. The Cobas SARS-CoV-2 detection used to detect the new coronavirus has obtained the FDA emergency use authorization, and the capacity has been greatly improved. Roche's chemotherapy has also been included in clinical trials for new crown pneumonia. Roche is expected to announce its findings in early summer and increase its capacity.

With another big pharmaceutical factory from Switzerland, Novartis's net sales in the first quarter were 12 billion 283 million US dollars, an increase of 11%, and China's market sales increased by 18% to 622 million US dollars. The main growth drivers came from the major innovative drugs, including Entresto $569 million (62% growth), Zolgensma 170 million, and Cosentyx 930 million (19% growth). The Department of generic drug business, Sanders, has a revenue of $2 billion 528 million, and its growth is mainly due to the long-term purchasing impact of the new crown pneumonia related drugs.

Novartis said that the first quarter of the epidemic did not have a significant impact on finance. "COVID-19 did lead to an increase in forward purchase customers, and some patients filled in a longer prescription period." Meanwhile, Novartis launched a large-scale clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine against new crown pneumonia, which announced that it would donate 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine in the world to fight the epidemic. In addition to hydroxychloroquine, Novartis related drugs, approved by researchers, have been approved for use in clinical trials related to the use of retioni, cannab, imatinib mesylate, scroozumab, hydroxychloroquine and Valsartan in the treatment of new crown pneumonia.

Pfizer became the largest pharmaceutical company in the first quarter. Pfizer earned $12 billion in the first quarter of 2020, down 8%. Its biopharmaceutical business grew by 11%, but the 37% decline in Upjohn business dragged down its overall business. Pfizer emphasized that in addition to the decline in Lyrica sales in the US due to generic drug competition, the sales of Lipitor and Norvasc fell sharply in the Chinese market because they did not participate in the volume purchase.

Another affected by the volume of purchases is Sanofi. In the first quarter, the earnings report once again stressed that the sales of China's market declined by 14.4%, due to the decline in sales of Abono and its sales in China. However, innovative drugs such as Dupixent were not affected by the epidemic, and their sales increased by 129.8% to 776 million.

Senofi has also promised to donate 100 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to 50 countries around the world and is expected to further increase production in the coming months. At the same time, as a vaccine giant, Senofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced the joint development of the COVID-19 vaccine in April 14th. Senofi provided its S protein COVID-19 antigen, which is based on recombinant DNA technology; GSK will contribute to adjuvant technology. The two sides plan to start phase I clinical trials in the second half of 2020.

The other two big increases in the list were AstraZeneca and Lilly. AstraZeneca increased its total revenue in the first quarter to 16% US dollars to US $6 billion 354 million, new drug performance increased by 47% to US $2 billion 986 million, and China's market grew 14% to 1 billion 416 million US dollars, second only to the US $2 billion 91 million, which is higher than the US $1 billion 204 million in Europe.

Lilly earned $5 billion 860 million in the first quarter, up 15% from the same period last year. Lilly said that the global sales growth in the first quarter of 2020 was positively affected by the increase in customer buying patterns and the trend of patient prescriptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic increased global revenues by about $250 million.

Secondary effects

Even if growth remains unchanged, pharmaceutical companies will not be able to avoid the global economic downturn. According to GlobalData statistics, the top 20 global innovative pharmaceutical companies ranked first in the market in the first quarter of 2020 were 13 pharmaceutical companies whose market capitalization dropped. Among them, Bayer's quarterly decline was more than 25%, followed by GSK, Amgen, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Mercedes. The market capitalization dropped by more than 15%, and the overall decline was 7.9%.

Johnson continues to remain a leader despite its quarterly decline of 10% in its market capitalization. Peter Shapiro, senior director of drug and business knowledge at GlobalData, commented, "these reverses seem dramatic because of the long-term growth of these companies, but compared with other industries, COVID-19 epidemic has little impact on the pharmaceutical industry."

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Sciences are the only companies whose market capitalization has increased by more than 10%. Due to the potential effect of rheumatoid arthritis drug Sarilumab on the new crown pneumonia, the regeneration yuan rose by 32.5%, but Sanofi, another developer of the drug, dropped by more than 10% in the first quarter. Due to Reed's market, the market value of gilid increased by 14.5%, but the actual role of the drug is still unknown.

In addition to capital market volatility, the clinical trials of major companies were also affected in the first quarter. In March 23rd, Lilly became the first multinational pharmaceutical company to announce suspending and delaying most clinical studies. Pfizer also suspended some of the ongoing clinical studies in late March and postponed the start of most new studies. It is expected to restart recruitment in late April.

This will have different effects on pharmaceutical and CDMO enterprises. First, there is no patient in the hospital. The two is that CRO companies pay by stages. The clinical suspension will result in the delay of the company's revenue. According to Evaluate Vantage estimates, 315 studies will be delayed and the study will expire at the end of this year, involving 172104 subjects, which may be as high as $20 billion.

But according to China's statistics, the number of data has rebounded due to the improvement of the epidemic situation.

In April 29th, the company's first quarter earnings report, revenue 3 billion 188 million yuan, an increase of 15.1% over the same period. Li Ji, chairman and chief executive officer, said, "the outbreak of the 2019 coronavirus pneumonia has delayed the company's R & D center in Wuhan for nearly 2 months, and has affected the company's clinical trial service in China. At present, China's R & D production base has been fully resumed and is expected to perform well in the second quarter. Because of the trend of COVID-19 in the US, the business in the second quarter will be affected.

In terms of examination and approval, IQVIA studied the announcement of the top 20 drug sales companies and other smaller companies from March 28th to April 2nd. Less than half of the companies announced that their clinical trials were negatively affected by the epidemic. Most companies have announced that the new clinical trial will be delayed.

The approval of innovative drugs depends on regular interaction and guidance between pharmaceutical companies and regulators, especially FDA and EMA. In the months of the global epidemic, the approval and listing of other products may slow down due to the fact that energy is allocated to related drugs and vaccines.

Governments around the world have invested a lot of time and resources in the treatment of COVID-19, but most of the cost may fall on biopharmaceutical companies. The vaccine may cost more than 2 billion dollars; EvaluatePharma believes that the Reed phase III clinical trial may be the most expensive investment at present, which may cost about 150 million dollars. Of course, Gilead can afford it. If Reed is really effective, its business returns may be enormous. As a reference, the total cost of clinical development of Roche's Tamiflu is estimated at $300 million. Since its listing in 1999, its total sales volume has reached $15 billion 900 million, reaching its peak in 2014, exceeding $1 billion.

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