Gilead Sciences (GILD) reported a blowout quarter on Tuesday afternoon, topping consensus estimates across the board and possibly stopping the bleeding — at least temporarily — in biopharmaceutical stocks since Biogen’s (BIIB) ugly second quarter miss days ago. The beat, driven in-part by unexpected performance from the blockbuster hepatitis C treatments Harvoni and Sovaldi, will also temporarily quite those wondering whether Hep C sales were already topping out.
Gilead’s total revenue of $8.2 billion easily beat analyst consensus for $7.6 billion in the quarter, and EPS of $3.15 topped the $2.71 expected by the street. Sales Harvoni and Sovaldi globally came in at $3.6 and $1.29 billion in the quarter, respectively; Wall Street was looking for $3.36B and $951 million.
And, Gilead upped guidance for the year, from $28-29 billion in April to $29-30 billion.
Gilead ended the quarter with $14.7 billion in cash and equivalents, which will no doubt stoke the question on every biotech investor’s mind: when and what will Gilead buy? Gilead has suffered from a lagging P/E multiple compared to its biopharma peers all year, and we suspect it will take a big acquisition, or a major pipeline success (like from simtuzumab), to re-rate the stock.
The BioRunUp fund was ahead of the street on most facets of GILD’s earnings in a primer for subscribers this past month, which proved prescient with Tuesday’s beat. Despite being ahead of the street already, the BioRunUp fund’s EPS estimate was still behind Gilead’s reported numbers. Truly, 2Q15 was a blowout quarter.
