AbbVie Stock Slips After Earnings, Charge for Potential Opioid Deal

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The drugmaker

AbbVie

turned in quarterly earnings that were roughly in line with Wall Street expectations, confirming financial forecasts it had issued earlier and disclosing a “potential settlement” of litigation over a business unit’s past sales of opioid drugs.

The stock was down 1% in premarket trading immediately after the Friday morning announcement, while the S&P 500 was 0.6% higher.

AbbVie

(ticker: ABBV) reported adjusted diluted earnings of $3.37 per share for the second quarter, just above the

FactSet

analyst consensus estimate of $3.32. The company reported revenue of $14.6 billion, up 4.5% on a reported basis from the same quarter last year, and a hair below the $14.7 billion FactSet estimate.

AbbVie said it continues to expect adjusted diluted earnings of between $13.78 and $13.98 per share for the full fiscal year.

Sales of the company’s megablockbuster immunology drug Humira were $5.4 billion, just above the FactSet estimate of $5.2 billion. Humira will begin to face competition from so-called biosimilars next year, with the first expected to go on sale in late January. Analysts expect Humira sales to drop to $12.7 billion next year, from $21 billion this year, according to FactSet.

Sales of Skyrizi, another AbbVie immunology drug, were $1.3 billion, up 85.9% on a reported basis compared with the same quarter last year. All told, immunology drugs accounted for $7.2 billion in revenue for AbbVie in the quarter, up 17.8% on a reported basis compared with 2021.

“We delivered another strong quarter with substantial progress for our new products and indications,” said AbbVie’s CEO, Richard A. Gonzalez, in a statement. “The momentum of our business, combined with advances across our pipeline continue to support AbbVie’s promising long-term outlook.”

Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that AbbVie’s Allergan division, which the company acquired in 2020, had reached a nationwide opioid settlement with state and local governments under which it would pay more than $2 billion. The report came a day after

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries

(TEVA) said that it had reached an agreement in principle to pay up to $4.4 billion to settle its opioid lawsuits.

In its Friday morning earnings release, AbbVie reported spending $2.2 billion on “litigation matters” in the second quarter, which it said “primarily includes a charge related to a potential settlement of litigation involving Allergan’s past sales of opioid products.”

AbbVie is hosting a conference call for investors at 9 a.m. Eastern.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]