First Cel­gene, now Gilead can’t ac­cu­rate­ly fore­cast drug sales rev­enue. How bad is this?

On the same day Cel­gene was get­ting shel­lacked af­ter cut­ting longterm rev­enue fore­casts for the com­pa­ny, Gilead man­aged to keep the in­vestor herd in a state of alarm with fresh ev­i­dence of the fast-de­te­ri­o­rat­ing mar­ket for hep C drugs.

Giv­en its dom­i­nant po­si­tion in HIV, Gilead was able to boost rev­enue for that big chunk of its busi­ness. But its hep C busi­ness de­clined $1.1 bil­lion for Q3 com­pared to the same pe­ri­od a year ago. What re­al­ly sent the mar­ket over­board was a move to trim the pro­ject­ed top end of an­nu­al sales while in­di­cat­ing that Q4 could be very painful, re­flect­ing price com­pe­ti­tion in the field.

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