Shares of Gilead Sciences (GILD) are ticking higher today after the FDA approved an all-oral form of its Hepatitis-C drug. RBC’s Michael Yeeand team consider the implications:
Gilead’s all-oral “Harvoni” was approved for 12 and 8 weeks at price of $94.5k (12wks) and $63k (8wks) as expected. We believe the price is very reasonable and attractive to payors as it is a significant discount to previous regimens that costs upwards of $100-140k when combined with IFN or Simeprevir. In fact, numerous abstracts at this year’s AASLD
meeting discuss the positive cost-effectiveness of [Ledipasvir/Sofosbuvir] through better health outcomes and the benefit of early treatment due to prevention of future liver complications (as opposed to prioritizing treatment to only pts with advanced disease). We don’t expect insurance to be an issue as well as payors have better planned their budgets for next year. Also by looking at a single-center example from AASLD abstract, 58% were prescribed Sof/Sim combo and 84% were approved for treatment, evenly split between private and gov’t insurance.
Shares of Gilead Sciences have gained 0.4% to $106.26 at 2:37 p.m. today.
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