Yesterday, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) released its Q2 2018 financials and held an earnings call with analysts. J&J reported Remicade® sales in Q2 2018 of $918 million in the U.S. and $1.320 billion worldwide, which is a 13.7% decline over the sales J&J reported for the same quarter last year ($1.064 billion U.S.; $1.530 billion worldwide). During the earnings call, J&J’s Chief Financial Officer, Joseph Wolk, explained that infliximab biosimilars had a “negative impact” on its sales of Remicade®, with a decline in the U.S. of “approximately 14%.” Mr. Wolk explained, however, that this decline was “largely driven by price erosion[,]” as “Remicade has retained approximately 94% of the infliximab volume share.”
When asked by an analyst about J&J’s expectations regarding the pending antitrust lawsuit by Pfizer and others alleging anticompetitive practices by J&J to insulate against biosimilar competition, Chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky responded that “[t]here is really no update on that. So, we’ll wait and see, but it’s not something that concerns us giv[en] the contracting practices that we employ and how that is on par with others in the industry.”
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