AbbVie cuts earnings forecast due to milestone payments

Harpoon Therapeutics Inc

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Health Care : Biotechnology | Small Cap Value

Company profile

Harpoon Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage immunotherapy company. The Company is engaged in the developing a T cell engager that harness the power of the body’s immune system to treat patients suffering from cancer and other diseases. It is developing a pipeline of T cell engagers using its TriTACs, focused on the treatment of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. It has also nominated its clinical candidate using its ProTriTAC platform, a prodrug version of its TriTAC platform, designed to expand the target space for T cell engagers and bring the benefits of TriTACs to the patients. The Company’s TriTAC product candidates include HPN328, HPN217 and HPN536. The Company’s ProTriTAC product candidate include HPN601. T cell engagers are engineered proteins that direct a patient’s own T cells to kill target cells that express specific proteins, or antigens, carried by the target cells.

AbbVie cuts earnings forecast due to milestone payments

7:59 am ET January 9, 2023 (MarketWatch) Print

By Wallace Witkowski

A day after AbbVie partner CytomX reported 'encouraging clinical activity' in cancer treatment trials, AbbVie discloses charge of nearly a quarter-billion dollars

AbbVie Inc. executives lowered their outlook for the quarter and year in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday, which cited research and development expenses and milestone payments to partners.

AbbVie (ABBV)said it must pay out $243 million in milestone payments to partners for acquired in-process research and development, or IPR&D, in the fourth quarter, bringing the grand total for the year to $697 million. Accounting for IPR&D and milestone payments was recently required by the SEC for drugmakers because the regulatory agency considers creating performance measures that exclude normal expenses to be misleading.

The charge is expected to reduce AbbVie's (ABBV) adjusted earnings by 14 cents a share, to $3.51 a share from a previous forecast of $3.65 a share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had on average projected $3.65 a share on revenue of $15.31 billion.

Read: Drug companies are making an accounting change after the SEC cracked down on Biogen

For the year, AbbVie now expects $13.70 to $13.74 a share, with a milestone expense of between $3.51 and $3.55 a share, down from a forecast of $13.84 to $13.88 a share. Analysts had expected $13.85 a share on revenue of $58.29 billion.

On Thursday, CytomX Therapeutics Inc. (CTMX) said it was seeing "encouraging clinical activity" in its trials with AbbVie for a cancer treatment candidate. A request for comment on whether CytomX was receiving any of those milestone payment was not returned by time of publication.

AbbVie shares switched between slight gains and losses after hours, following a 1.9% gain to close at $166.55, while the S&P 500 index rose 2.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index gained 2.6%.

The company said it "does not forecast acquired IPR&D and milestones expense due to uncertainty of the future occurrence and timing of these transactions."

AbbVie is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Feb. 9 before the market opens.

-Wallace Witkowski

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 09, 2023 07:59 ET (12:59 GMT)