From Motley Fool:
Orexigen and its marketing partner Takeda are attempting to finally open up the massive weight loss market that their competitors, Arena Pharmaceuticals and VIVUS, have so far failed to capture with their respective diet pills.
Despite tens of millions of severely obese potential patients within the U.S., Arena and VIVUS' FDA approved weight loss drugs, Belviq and Qsymia, will probably generate only about $100 million in combined sales this year.
Orexigen's pill, Contrave, has two advantages over its competitors that are already paying dividends in terms of capturing market share. First, Contrave is the only FDA approved obesity drug with a large amount of data on cardiovascular outcomes. Interim analysis from the so-called "Light Study", which is onoing and won't report final results until 2017, was good enough for the FDA to approve the drug and European regulators to recommend approval. Neither Belviq nor Qsymia appear to be on track to gain approval in Europe anytime soon, largely due to outstanding questions regarding their cardiovascular safety profiles.
The second advantage Contrave has is that Takeda has put a huge amount of marketing muscle behind its commercial launch, with a reported 900 sales reps dedicated to the U.S. market. This effort dwarfs the marketing power behind either Belviq or Qsymia.
Contrave should gain European approval by the second-quarter of 2015, and Orexigen looks poised to take the lion's share of the obesity market going forward, making it a stock to keep an eye on next year.
