Enanta Pharmaceuticals Inc (ENTA)

[DewDiligence]

1. Why hasn't ABBV been able to sell more of their HCV drug, relative to GILD's sales?

There are several reasons. GILD’s Harvoni is more convenient (a single pill once a day), and it does not require ribavirin for GT1a patients, as V-Pak does. Moreover, when ABBV inked its exclusive deal with ESRX, GILD responded by locking up exclusive deals with most of the other large US payers. Then, in Oct 2015, the FDA added a warning to the V-Pak label regarding cirrhotic patients who shouldn’t have been taking V-Pak in the first place; nevertheless, this warning appears to have cut into V-Pak’s share of new patients in the US.

In Europe, (where a higher proportion of patients have GT1b rather than GT1a), V-Pak has a much higher market share than it does in the US (#msg-122269461). We’ll find out on Friday how V-Pak is doing in Japan, which also has a high proportion of GT1b patients.

2. Do you believe the newly approved once-per-day pill will make any difference in sales?

It will help marginally, IMO.

3. Do you believe ABBV will be able to compete better with their next-gen drug?

Absolutely. ABBV/ENTA’s next-gen regimen (ABT-493/ABT-530) appears to be as good as anything from GILD or any other company. The phase-3 program for this regimen is outlined in #msg-122031014.