Novartis spinout Sandoz garnered $2.6 billion in second-quarter product sales. After the performance, the company raised its sales guidance for the year.
After taking a market share lead in the crowded Humira biosimilar space and with other key launches in the works, Novartis spinout Sandoz is raising its full-year sales guidance.Sandoz previously communicated that it expects 2024 sales growth to reach mid-single-digit percentages. Now, after reporting second-quarter results, the company said it expects mid- to high-single-digit growth for the year.The company collected $2.6 billion in net sales during the second quarter, representing 9% sales growth compared to the same period last year.The boost was driven by the drugmaker’s clutch of biosimilars, which together saw an "exceptional" growth rate of 29%, CEO Richard Saynor said on Sandoz’s recent earnings call. Sandoz does not report individual product sales. Within the drugmaker’s biosimilar franchise, Humira copycat Hyrimoz is the standout. The med holds an 81% market share in the crowded space of biosimilar competitors to AbbVie’s popular immunology drug and has the “broadest payer coverage” of them all, according to a Sandoz investor presentation (PDF).Sandoz took on a unique strategy with its Hyrimoz, launching both a branded and an unbranded version and linking with CVS Health’s biosimilar subsidiary Cordavis on a co-labeled version. Earlier this year, CVS Caremark pulled AbbVie’s branded Humira from its national commercial formularies, in turn sending Hyrimoz prescriptions skyrocketing.Outside of Hyrimoz, the biosimilar maker has a number of potentially big launches in the works. Just recently, Sandoz launched its version of Johnson & Johnson’s Stelara in Europe. That biosim is expected to hit the U.S. in February 2025 in accordance with a J&J settlement. After that, the company looks to launch its copies of Amgen’s bone drugs Xgeva and Prolia, which will be branded as Wyost and Jubbonti, respectively, in the second quarter of next year. Regeneron and Bayer’s ophthalmology powerhouse Eylea is another potential victim of Sandoz's biosimilar ambitions. The companies are engaged in patent litigation right now, but Saynor said the company's Eylea biosimilar should arrive in the coming years.In the meantime, Sandoz can also still rely on its aging Omnitrope to buoy sales alongside Hyrimoz. That drug, a biosimilar to Pfizer’s human growth hormone Genotropin, predates even the FDA’s biosimilar approval pathway with its 2006 nod. Since then, Omnitrope has overtaken Pfizer’s original as the market leader, and its sales were still on the rise in the second quarter of 2024.It hasn’t yet been a year since Sandoz spun out of Novartis, but the company is already hard at work initiating a “multi-year transformation program” to simplify its organizational structure. Under that program, the company expects savings of $50 million in this year's second half. By 2026, Sandoz is targeting annual savings of $200 million.