Revenue down 6% year over year. Prescriptions of the company's top-selling drug, Byetta, down 5.9% quarter over quarter. Amylin Pharmaceuticals'
Yet shares are up 6% today. Investors are a forward-looking bunch.
Their optimism owes to the timeline for Bydureon, the company's once-weekly version of Byetta, designed using Alkermes's
After getting the FDA to sign off on its trial design, Amylin plans to start the trial early next month, and it's now guiding for resubmitting the drug in the second half of the year. While that’s technically the same timeline as in a worst-case scenario, at least there's a possibility of an earlier submission.
Yet on the conference call yesterday, CEO Dan Bradbury cautioned investors not to be overly optimistic. If everything goes perfectly as planned, maybe the company gets it completed in the third quarter. However, science is rarely perfect. Investors should plan accordingly.
Once Bydureon gets approved, it should be able to do more than just cannibalize Byetta sales. Byetta has been steadily losing market share to Novo Nordisk's
Amylin is still considerably cheaper than it was before Bydureon was turned down by the FDA. It should be able to get back to the $20-per-share range, but that's going to take some time.
Interested in keeping track of Amylin as it approaches its third attempt at an FDA approval for Bydureon? Click here to add it to My Watchlist, which will help you keep track of all our Foolish analysis on Amylin.
