• by Les Luchter , October 30, 2023

“AbbVie continues to perform exceptionally well,” Richard Gonzalez, chairman and chief executive officer, told analysts Friday as he kicked off the pharma company’s third quarter earnings call.

Even as AbbVie reported a 6.0% decline in worldwide net revenues to $13.93 billion for the quarter year-over-year, the company increased its full-year guidance for both 2023 and 2024 while raising its quarterly dividend 4.7%.

AbbVie’s overall revenue decline had been expected, following loss of exclusivity earlier this year for its anti-inflammatory powerhouse drug Humira, whose net revenues in the quarter plummeted 36.2% YOY, from $5.56 billion to $3.55 billion.

Taking up Humira’s slack were two other AbbVie anti-inflammatories, the heavily advertised Skyrizi and Rinvoq.

Skyrizi net revenues increased 52.1% YOY to $2.16 billion, while Rinvoq rose 59.8% to $1.1 billion.

Those two brands are “now on pace to deliver approximately $11.6 billion in combined sales this year,” Stewart, executive vice president, chief commercial officer, told the analysts.

Scott Renz, executive vice president, chief financial officer, added that AbbVie now forecasts that Skyrizi and Rinvoq will evenly split a full-year sales increase of around $300 million, reflecting a “strong uptake” in their use for inflammatory bowel disease.

“We continue to anticipate that these two products will collectively exceed Humira peak revenues by 2027, with robust growth expected into the next decade,” declared Robert Michael, president and chief operating officer.

Skyrizi remains “the clear market leader” for psoriasis, Stewart said, with the medication capturing “roughly one-third of the total prescriptions in the U.S..” The drug is also increasing its leading position in psoriatic arthritis, he said, and continuing its “rapid uptake” in Crohn's disease, “where we are capturing roughly one out of every four in-play patients.”

For the latter indication, Stewart was very upbeat about a recent head-to-head study in which Skyrizi bested Johnson & Johnson’s Stelara in what Fierce Pharma called a “resounding win.”

“We anticipate these strong results will clearly support Skyrizi as the best-in-category therapy for Crohn's, which is important for continued rapid share capture,” he said.

In news of other AbbVie brands, blood cancer treatment Imbruvica saw net revenues down 20.0% to $908 million -- and the company taking a $2.1 billion charge due to the medication’s inclusion as one of 10 drugs selected by the government for initial Medicare price negotiations. While those negotiations are still in process, Renz said that AbbVie had assumed a negotiated price to determine the charge, but that “we’re in the middle of these negotiations, and it really wouldn't be appropriate for us to talk about what that is.”

Botox, meanwhile, saw its therapeutic use grow 7.1% to $748 million YoY, driven by migraine patients, but its cosmetic use dropped 2.7% to $620 million.

Responding to a question about how the booming market in GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy might impact the market of aesthetic drugs like Botox,, Carrie Strum, AbbVie’s president of Global Allergan Aesthetics, said, “We continue to think that anything that gets a subset of patients engaged in their appearance…is a positive tailwind.” Many of AbbVie’s aesthetic practitioner customers, she said, are also offering GLP-1s to their patients “and they see it as a natural opportunity to cross-sell.”