We’re not yet done with the coronavirus pandemic, but you wouldn’t know it from the second-quarter results in the pharma industry.
After a tentative first quarter of 2021—attributed to the pandemic and a change of the guard in Washington, D.C.—signs of recovery abound.
Over the last few weeks as companies have presented their quarterly numbers, most are telling a different version of the same story. Drug sales are up, with some therapeutic areas rebounding faster than others. And while the recovery is underway, there’s still a long ride ahead to return to the industry’s pre-pandemic landscape.
The resilience of the rebound has even surprised market experts. In this round of reports, many companies exceeded Wall Street’s revenue expectations.
More than half of Big Pharma companies reported revenue increases greater than 15% over the same quarter in 2020, which was marred by lockdowns and the shock to the economic system that ensued at the start of the pandemic.
“We have generally seen solid double-digit sales growth due to increasing doctor visits and diagnosis rates and a favorable comparison to the second quarter of 2020 which was negatively impacted from stocking in the first quarter of 2020,” Ashtyn Evans, a senior analyst at Edward Jones, told Fierce Pharma.
I have expressed funny feelings that we're at the top of something, and I think Derek's post today indicates his willingness to consider the other side (i.e. pharma/biotech genuinely may have secret sauce that is more secret and saucier than other parts of the economy).* Overall, this is good news for hiring. Best wishes to job seekers, and all of us.
*For the record, my running theory-that-cannot-be-falsified is that a decade or more of zero interest rate policy will get you some odd places.
Kind of weird to read that our industry is doing well due to "increasing [...] diagnosis rates."
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