If Iclusig sales triple next year, what will Aria shares trade at?
In my opinion, it is not an if, but almost a certainty that Iclusig sales will triple next year. And to make my case, please ponder the following:
According to all the prescription information that has been published, along with Ariad's 1st Quarter report of sales and the article written by David Sobel and published yesterday, the calculations break down as follows:
When Ariad reported it's 1st Quarter this year, we learned that sales were 6.4 Million and that by the end of the Quarter, over 400 patients were on Iclusig. That means that new patients were being put on Iclusig at the rate of a little better that 30 new patients per week. We further learned from the various reporting bureaus, and David Sobel's article, that new patient scripts peaked at 62 per week for the week ended June 7th and have fallen since then to a low of 29 per week in the week ended July 12th and last week rebounded to 41 new prescriptions for the week. Based upon those numbers, it certainly appears that Iclusig has maintained a bit over 30 new prescriptions per week since the reporting of our first Quarter.
Based upon the progress of the launch so far, I feel fairly comfortable predicting that for the year of 2013, Iclusig will average a bit over 30 new patients per week, for a total of about 1,600 patients, in the United States, put on Iclusig during 2013. That would represent a capture rate of about 65% of the estimated 2,500 CML patients that Harvey keeps telling us willl switch their TKI each year.
Now lets see about sales of Iclusig, next year.
Based upon the above, 1,600 patients will start 2014, on Iclusig. Assuming a reasonable falloff of about 15% (deaths from other causes, intolerance (if that is possible), etc) We will have about 1,350 US patients, that started Iclusig in 2013, taking Iclusig for the whole year in 2014. At $115,000 per patient per year, the 1,600 (1,350 net) US patients starting in 2013, will alone generate sales of over $155,000,000 Add to that figure the US patients that will start Iclusig in 2014, plus the European patients that started Iclusig in both 2013 and will start in 2014, and we are probably talking about total Iclusig sales of between $210,000,000 at the low end and perhaps $250,000,000 at the upper range. If, as many on this board believe, we end 2013 with US Iclusig sales of between $60,000,000 to $70,000,000, Iclusig sales for 2014 will more than triple
As I said many times in Court.... Your Honor, I rest my case.
JMHO,
Barry
