By Deena Beasley
(Reuters) -Gilead Sciences Inc on Tuesday posted lower-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings, citing a $1.25 billion legal settlement involving HIV drug patents and a charge related to its collaboration with Arcus Biosciences Inc <RCUS.N>, sending the company’s shares down nearly 4%.
Gilead reported adjusted quarterly earnings of 69 cents per share, down from $2.19 a year earlier. Wall Street analysts had forecast $1.60 per share, as compiled by Refinitiv.
For full-year 2022, Gilead said it expects adjusted earnings of $6.20 to $6.70 per share on product sales of $23.8 billion to $24.3 billion, or $21.8 billion to $22.3 billion excluding sales of its COVID-19 drug Veklury.
The targets are short of Wall Street estimates, “which puts a near-term damper on core business sentiment,” said Jefferies analyst Michael Yee.
Shares of Gilead were down 3.7% at $65.80 in after hours trading.
The company said it will make a one-time $1.25 billion payment to ViiV Healthcare – an HIV company majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline, with Pfizer Inc and Shionogi & Co Ltd as shareholders. It will also pay a 3% royalty until 2027 on sales of HIV drug Biktarvy and on future U.S. sales of any product containing its main component.
Quarterly revenue fell slightly to $7.24 billion from $7.42 a year earlier, but came in ahead of the average analyst estimate of $6.67 billion.
Product sales for the quarter fell 2% to $7.2 billion.
Sales of COVID-19 drug Veklury, known chemically as remdesivir, decreased 30% to $1.4 billon, but still easily surpassed the $864 million expected by analysts.
Fourth-quarter sales of Gilead’s HIV medicines rose 7% to $4.5 billion. The company had said in October that sales of non-COVID treatments, particularly of its flagship HIV drugs, were hurt during the pandemic as many people avoided healthcare settings, but had started to recover.
Quarterly sales of breast cancer drug Trodelvy came in at $118 million, in line with analyst estimates of $116 million.
Yee said investor focus remains on upcoming results from a key trial of Trodelvy in patients with a specific type of breast cancer. The medication was the main driver of Gilead’s $21 billion purchase of Immunomedics in 2020.
(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
