Gilead Continues to Recover from Express Scripts Loss

Health and Healthcare

Published: January 9, 2015 11:00 am

After the markets closed on Thursday, Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) was picked up by Anthem Inc. (NYSE: ANTM) to provide its hepatitis C drug as the primary option for patients. As a part of this deal, the price of Gilead’s treatment will be effectively lowered.

In the past Gilead had taken some heat for the high price of its hepatitis C drug, Harvoni. Most complaints to Gilead were because of the high prices, which many believed were unnecessary. Looking back to its quarterly earnings from July, it estimated its 2014 gross margin on product sales to be in the range of 85% to 88%. Some might say the company got greedy.

Gilead developed its second-generation hepatitis C drug, Harvoni, which combines Sovaldi with ledipasvir, another drug produced by Gilead. The FDA approved Harvoni earlier in October. Sovaldi was Gilead’s cash cow in 2014, with treatment costing roughly $84,000. The Harvoni treatment costs in the area of $94,000.

Anthem has yet to release the pricing for Gilead’s treatment on its plan.

Previously, Express Scripts Holding Co. (NASDAQ: ESRX) had partnered with AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV) to exclusively distribute AbbVie’s hepatitis C drug, almost immediately following its FDA approval.

This started a price and distribution war, which Gilead is attempting to win by partnering with Anthem.

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AbbVie’s hepatitis C treatment is more expensive, as well as considered to be inferior to Harvoni, according to Barron’s. This would suggest that Express Scripts got a deep discount when it agreed to exclusively provide AbbVie’s treatment.

According to Bloomberg, in 2013, Anthem’s employers’ plans served roughly 30 million people in the United States, which was greater than any other for-profit insurer. The deal was the result of favorable pricing from Gilead, among other factors. This favorable pricing is most likely from the increased competition of AbbVie and Express Scripts.

Earlier in the week, CVS Health Corp. (NYSE: CVS) announced that Gilead’s drugs would be its exclusive option for patients on commercial plans, as well as those on government plans such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Shares of Gilead were up fractionally at $102.51 in Friday morning trading. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $122.83 and a 52-week trading range of $63.50 to $116.83.

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