As Ab­b­Vie cel­e­brates bet­ter-than-ex­pect­ed earn­ings, CEO Rick Gon­za­lez force­ful­ly de­fends pipeline

Ab­b­Vie large­ly beat ex­pec­ta­tions in its sec­ond-quar­ter earn­ings up­date, and ex­ecs were quick to beat their chests at bet­ter-than-an­tic­i­pat­ed sales fig­ures across its port­fo­lio.

Wall Street took the up­date as a pos­i­tive, with Ab­b­Vie shares $AB­BV ris­ing near­ly 6% Thurs­day morn­ing.

But while the re­sults pro­vide a buffer against biosim­i­lar com­pe­ti­tion to Hu­mi­ra, long pro­ject­ed to eat away at sig­nif­i­cant chunks of Ab­b­Vie’s rev­enue, ques­tions re­main over how long such a cush­ion will last. An­a­lysts were quick to pep­per Ab­b­Vie lead­er­ship with ques­tions about when the Hu­mi­ra drop-off might oc­cur, when that drop-off would sta­bi­lize and about up­com­ing pipeline and M&A prospects.

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