Research archive for AMGN

Here's some good news from Amgen. Their new cancer drug Lumakras achieved superior results to chemotherapy treatment Docetaxel, in a phase 3 study. In the study of 345 people, on average, patients taking Lumakras went 5.6 months without their cancer progressing versus 4.5 months for those taking Docetaxel.

Vestact-recommended pharma company Amgen had second-quarter results out late last week. The numbers were better than expected with revenue of just under $6.6 billion and profits of $4.65 per share. The beat was driven by better sales of Repatha, Prolia, Lumakras, and their biosimilar portfolio.

If you owned pharma giant Amgen during 2020 and 2021 you might have felt disappointed as it drifted sideways while everything else went up. But this year, it's actually up 6% while everything else has tanked. Its solid margins, reliable revenues and healthy dividend yield (well above 3% per annum) has meant that Amgen has stood strong when called upon.

Earlier this week, Amgen released slightly boring full-year numbers. I suppose that's what you want from a drug company? In 2021 there wasn't much revenue growth due to competition pushing down the price of some of their key drugs. They aren't expecting much change for 2022 either, and the management team is guiding for a slight drop in revenue.

Vestact-recommended stock Amgen released its third-quarter earnings earlier in the week, showing that demand for their products is slowly coming back.

Heart disease is by far the world's biggest killer. According to the WHO, 16% of deaths since the year 2000 are the result of heart disease. In 2019, it accounted for 9 million out of the 55 million recorded fatalities. The next biggest killer is strokes which accounted for just over 6 million deaths in that year.

Our worst-performing portfolio holding this year is pharmaceutical company Amgen. It's in the green since January, but only by 2.3%.

On Tuesday night Amgen released results that looked decent. Revenues were in line with expectations and profits comfortably beat the Wall Street forecast. Unfortunately, forward guidance looked a little soft so the share took a hit during Wednesday's session, down over 6%.

As expected, the US FDA just approved Amgen's new KRAS drug for cancer. The brand name will be Lumakras. I can really say "as expected" because back in June 2019 I wrote this in the Vestact newsletter:

Amgen released some underwhelming numbers last week after missing expectations on revenue. The share price has also been disappointing of late, it is flat over the last year.

Biotech juggernaut Amgen released its numbers for the December 2020 quarter yesterday. The numbers were impressive considering they had to lower their drug prices.

It's earning season, and the quarterly numbers are rolling in. Our big-cap biotech holding Amgen was out with results just after 22h00 SAST last night. They were excellent, with reported profits of $4.37 per share, well ahead of expectations at $3.80 per share.

I said I would feature some lesser known CEO's of stocks we own. An important part of any investment decision is knowing that the company is in good leadership hands. One of the nice things about investing in a mature and sophisticated market like the US is that you can assume (not always of course) that the top dogs at big companies have to be super smart and hard working to get there.

On Tuesday night after the US market closed Amgen reported their latest results. Revenue for the quarter was $6.2 billion, in-line with expectations, and profits of $4.25 per share were ahead of the expectations of $3.84.

If you own a bunch of high-quality stocks in a portfolio, good things are always happening to them, and you only find out later. Here's a case in point, Amgen just had a major patent protection victory. The stock popped up to a new all-time high of $260 per share yesterday.