Eli Lilly executives said there’s every reason to be optimistic about future sales of Effient, the blood thinner launched last summer with expectations of perhaps growing to become a billion-dollar seller one day. The only worry seems to be early sales of the drug are headed in the wrong direction.
Reporting its fourth-quarter results, Lilly said that sales of Effient, which the company co-markets with Japans Daiichi Sankyo, slid to a tiny $3.8 million world-wide in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter following the drugs August launch, world-wide sales totaled $22.6 million.
On the conference call with analysts, Lilly execs said they were undeterred about Effients prospects, offering comments like we feel just as good about Effient today as we did when we launched the product.” CEO John Lechleiter explained it was still early days in the roll-out and noted there was an initial jump in third-quarter sales because wholesalers were stocking up on the drug.
Lilly has long had high hopes for Effient to help replace the revenue from drugs that are losing patent protection in the next few years. But Effient also is in a tough market, competing against Plavix whose fourth-quarter sales rose 10% to $1.6 billion, Bristol-Myers reported today.
There was some better fourth-quarter numbers in Lilly’s results today and Lilly and Bristol-Myers also announced a settlement in a fight stemming from Lilly purchase of Imclone in 2008. Here’s the Dow Jones Newswires report with more details.
Photo credit: Lilly