What happened
Shares of Coherus BioSciences (CHRS 5.70%) soared 17.7% on Thursday, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, after the biotech company announced better-than-expected quarterly results.
Coherus' net revenue climbed a whopping 81% year over year to $58.7 million, translating to an adjusted net loss of $32.8 million, or $0.38 per share. Analysts, on average, were anticipating a wider net loss of $0.48 per share on lower revenue of $50.5 million.
So what
Coherus' top line was driven by a combination of $31.7 million of sales from its UDENYCA drug and $26.7 million of net sales from CIMERLI (which launched in October 2022).
"In the second quarter, we had strong execution on our strategy to build an innovative immuno-oncology company funded by revenues from FDA-approved products, and we made good progress across all areas of our business," stated Coherus chairman and CEO Denny Lanfear. "Coherus is successfully diversifying into a multi-product commercial organization with growing revenues supporting the development of our next-generation immuno-oncology franchise."
Now what
For the full year 2023, Coherus reiterated its guidance for net product revenue to exceed $275 million. That includes at least $100 million of revenue from CIMERLI, with combined research and development (R&D) and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses ranging from $315 million to $335 million.
The company also anticipates closing its pending merger with Surface Oncology in Q3 -- a combination it expects to "significantly advance Coherus' next-generation immuno-oncology pipeline focused on the tumor micro-environment with clinical stage anti-IL-27 and anti-CCR8 development programs."
Of course, most analysts were already modeling higher full-year revenue of $293 million leading into this report. But given Coherus' relative outperformance going into the second half of this year, it should be no surprise to see shares of this leading cancer treatment stock rallying today in response.
