Keep an Eye on Biotech Partners' Earnings

Novartis (NYSE: NVS  ) reported earnings on Tuesday, and while the total of its $14.9 billion sales number was important for the large pharma, the breakdown of individual drug sales was a little less important.

For a pair of small biotechs, though, sales of certain Novartis drugs were very important.

Investors in Momenta Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: MNTA  ) had their eyes on enoxaparin, the generic version of Sanofi's (NYSE: SNY  ) Lovenox. Momenta shares profits from the product with Novartis, which is in charge of distributing the generic.

Enoxaparin sales in the second quarter came in at $284 million. It's a blockbuster during its current run because Novartis is the only supplier of the generic drug. We won't know Momenta's exact share of the partnership until the company releases earnings, but we can assume it'll show a substantial profit again this quarter. In the first quarter, Novartis sold $247 million worth of enoxaparin, which resulted in it handing over nearly $76 million from the profit-sharing agreement.

Next up, Momenta's investors will have to turn their eyes toward Teva Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: TEVA  ) . The generic drug maker isn't a partner; it’s a competitor that's been trying to gain FDA approval of its copycat version of enoxaparin for years. In January, Teva said that the agency had a short list of questions that it needed to answer, but exact details have been hard to come by. With any luck, Teva will be more forthcoming about how close the company thinks it is to gaining FDA approval, and cutting into Momenta's profits, in its newest conference call.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals' (Nasdaq: VNDA  ) investors were also watching Novartis' earnings, but I doubt there was much rejoicing at the numbers. Schizophrenia treatment drug Fanapt managed just $7 million in sales in the second quarter, lower than the $9 million it posted in the first quarter. Vanda should be due about $0.7 million in royalties -- enough to pay a few execs' salaries, but not enough to be profitable.

One biotech that investors won't have to play the sneak-peek game with is Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq: HGSI  ) . The company will share details about the launch of its new lupus drug Benlysta after the market closes today, a few days ahead of partner GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK  ) .

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