Those who put money in Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX -0.06%) 10 years ago are sitting pretty right now. The company has easily outpaced the market over this period.
However, a lot has changed for the biotech in the meantime, and as we all know, past success isn't a guarantee of anything. Can Vertex pull off another market-beating performance through the next decade? Let's dig into what's going on with the biotech and determine where it might be in 10 years.
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Vertex's core area is still a growth driver
In the past decade, Vertex Pharmaceuticals has made significant progress in treating cystic fibrosis (CF), a rare disease that damages people's internal organs. Vertex's monopoly in the market for drugs that treat the underlying causes of CF has made it nearly unstoppable.
However, there is still plenty of work to be done in the next 10 years. First, of the 88,000 patients in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, more than 20,000 eligible patients have yet to start treatment. Next, Vertex is developing innovative therapies for the roughly 5,000 CF patients who aren't eligible for the current ones.
Given the company's track record, it'd be unwise to bet against it being successful in this endeavor in the next decade. Developing CF therapies has proved almost impossible for any other company but Vertex, which is why it still has a monopoly in the space.
But the biotech won't stop there. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is working on newer and better treatments, even for current patients. The drugmaker expects to share results from phase 3 clinical trials for its next-gen CF therapy sometime this year.
Vertex shouldn't face patent problems in the next decade, either. Its most crucial product right now is Trikafta, which won't run out of patent protection until the late 2030s. Newer medicines the company is working on will also be protected well beyond this period.
In short, Vertex's CF franchise should be safe. Though it likely won't be as significant a growth driver as it once was, it will still contribute meaningfully to the company's results through the next 10 years.
There will likely be plenty of new approvals
Vertex recently earned approval in the U.S. and elsewhere for a gene-editing therapy called Casgevy that treats a pair of blood-related disorders: transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia (TDT) and sickle cell disease (SCD). Vertex partnered with CRISPR Therapeutics to develop it. Right now, Casgevy is only approved for patients 12 years or older.
It could earn label expansions in treating younger patients and still more that would catapult the treatment's target market to more than 100,000 people, compared to the 32,000 the two companies will initially target. It will take a while for Casgevy's sales to ramp up. Gene-editing treatments are complex to administer. But Casgevy boasts significant potential and should become a growth driver for Vertex in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the biotech company will earn other approvals. Last year, management announced its goal to launch five new products in the next five years. Casgevy was the first of them. There could be a treatment for acute and neuropathic pain, another for APOL-1-mediated kidney disease, and more.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals' lineup will certainly look different even in a few years. The company will stop relying exclusively -- or even primarily -- on its CF products to deliver solid financial results.
Perhaps before 2034, the company will also launch ambitious programs currently in the early stages of development. Those include a therapy that could become a functional cure for type 1 diabetes.
Two words: Buy and forget
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a lot going its way: a market where it holds a monopoly, a newly approved gene-editing product that looks destined to become a blockbuster, several promising late-stage candidates, and other exciting programs in phase 1 and phase 2 studies. The biotech should continue to crush the market, just as it has in the past decade. That makes Vertex an excellent stock to buy and hold for a long while.
