Are they still the world’s worst drug dealers? – GALE

Soon the world should finally see an earnings release from our favorite purveyor of highly addicitve opiods, and developer of highly suspect cancer vaccines, Galena Biopharma (GALE).

Readers might recall that we examined the sales of Abstral, Galena’s sublingual fentanyl citrate tablets, in this post. We then drilled down into the sales numbers in this post, and discovered that GALE was essentially buying their own product.

So, in anticipation of the upcoming earnings release, lets look at independent sales data for the first two months of 2014.

The first chart is weekly reported sales of fentanyl citrate products, broken down by company:

Fentanyl Citrate Weekly Sales Jan-Feb 2014

Fentanyl Citrate Weekly Sales Jan-Feb 2014

“But where’s Insys?”, you ask. Insys (INSY) markets Subsys, a form of sublingual liquid fentanyl base, not fentanyl citrate. Here is a chart of weekly reported sales of fentanyl base, broken down by company:

Weekly Sales of Fentanyl Base Jan-Feb 2014

Fentanyl Base Weekly Sales Jan-Feb 2014

Some companies compete in both markets. If we sum them together, there are 13 companies providing fentanyl products in the US. Here they are ranked by sales from the end of February.

  1. Mylan
  2. Actavis
  3. Insys
  4. Mallinckrodt
  5. Janssen – The original devlopers of fentanyl in the 60s.
  6. Cephalon
  7. Par
  8. Apotex
  9. Sandoz
  10. Upsher-Smith
  11. Teva
  12. Galena
  13. Depomed

Based only on gross sales for the first two months of 2014, Galena is the second worst player.

If we look at net sales, and take into account GALE’s aggressive “patient assistance” program, Galena, which doesn’t have far to fall, will drop down below Depomed (DEPO), into last place.

One should note that of those 13 companies, only Galena hired stock promoters, DTG, to push their shares. We tried to visit the Dream Team Group, and came up, well, empty.

Galena has truly earned its crown.

The content contained in this blog represents only the opinions of the author. The author may hold either long or short positions in securities of various companies discussed in the blog. This commentary in no way constitutes investment advice, and should never be relied on in making an investment decision, ever. This blog is not a solicitation of business: all inquiries will be ignored. The content herein is intended solely for the entertainment of the reader, and the author.

3 comments

  1. Care to provide the source of this data?

    [@Kevin – Market professionals know the color scheme of those charts on sight, but several companies offer this data. Try subscribing to ‘Symphony’, if you invest in pharma/biotech and don’t have a subscription you are showing up to gunfights with a peashooter. -Editor]

    1. I think i found it at symphonyhealth dot com. Which is the subscription plan of their’s that you recommend?

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