Pharma news weekly roundup

The past week saw a bundle of fourth-quarter and full year financials from the biotech and pharma sector this week, with one factor paramount, especially US companies. Changes in currency year over year are wreaking havoc on the absolute numbers. That fact is that businesses with a lot of international business are hurting from the stronger dollar.

Among those reporting, two – Amgen and Bristol-Myers Squibb – beat analysts’ expectations, with the former posting a whopping 39% rise in net income, and upgrading its outlook for full-year 2016. AbbVie posted strong earnings, but saw its shares fall more than 4%. However, Eli Lilly predicted relatively flat 2016 earnings following strong gains last year, when sales of new cancer and diabetes drugs offset sharp declines in older medicines. Swiss rivals Roche and Novartis have also predicted flat 2016 earnings.

Last week saw the much expected US Food and Drug Administration for Merck & Co’s Zepatier, a once-daily, single-tablet combination of two drugs, grazoprevir and elbasvir. It is approved for patients infected with the most common type of hepatitis C in the USA, known as genotype 1, and a less common type, genotype 4.