Shire Q2: The Party's Over as Teva's Generics Decimate Adderall

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For months, Shire has been trying to defy gravity by jacking up the price of Adderall XR in order to encourage users to switch to its cheaper, new ADHD drug, Vyvanse. The company saw huge revenue increases as a result.

BNET noted last September that this strategy had a fatal flaw — as soon as Adderall went generic, those sales would collapse. And if Adderall patients could switch to Vyvanse, then Vyvanse patients could switch to generic Adderall.

In Q2 2009, Shire came down to earth: Revenues tumbled 18 percent to $630 million, following a 77 percent decline in sales of Adderall to $67.4 million from $296 million the year before. Vyvanse sales only earned $114 million in sales — less than half the drug it was intended to replace.

Worse, Vyvanse earned $117 million in Q1, so sales there are actually flat — and that’s from the period before generic Adderall, marketed by Teva — came in.

As late as November, the company was telling analysts the opposite would happen, that Vyvanse would be unaffected by generic Adderall.

Now, the company is telling investors to wait until the back-to-school season starts, when parents put their kids on meds. Will it work? Perhaps. But the fact that the company is promoting Vyvanse for adults means the school thing is irrelevant. If Vyvanse is to replace Adderall it would have to more than double its sales base in the face of generic headwinds.

Bottom line: Say goodbye to Adderall XR. It’s done. The party’s over.

Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.

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Shire hikes Adderall price as rumors fly

FiercePharma - 397 days 18 hours 43 minutes ago

Amid new speculation that Pfizer might snag Shire in a buyout deal, the specialty pharma is following through on its strategy to switch patients to its newest ADHD med Vyvanse as blockbuster Adderall XR nears the end of its patent. Shire is hiking the price of Adderall by 20 percent, a boost that confounded analysts expecting a smaller increase....
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BNET Pharma - 249 days 12 hours 14 minutes ago

Shire’s grip over the ADHD market with Adderall XR and its replacement drug, Vyvanse, appears to be weakening due to generic competition, according to CEO Angus Russell. In an interview with Reuters Russell said Shire’s share had slipped from 26 percent to 16 percent. Shire signed a three-year copromotion deal with GlaxoSmithKline in hopes...
Shire faces battle against ADHD generics

FiercePharma - 279 days 16 hours 46 minutes ago

Shire, the maker of ADHD drugs Adderall XR and Vyvanse had an excellent Q1 but now faces a challenge: Its two top products are threatened by a generic that Teva brought to market on April 2, BNet Pharma reports. Report
Shire Q1: The Big Fight Against Teva's Generics Begins

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Shire, the maker of ADHD drugs Adderall XR and Vyvanse had an excellent Q1 but now faces a challenge: It’s two top products are threatened by a generic that Teva brought to market on April 2. The company is also persisting in the U.S with its Daytrana ADHD patch, which was forced off the market
ADHD - some observations

PharmaGossip - 398 days 18 hours 17 minutes ago

Specialty pharmaceutical company Shire has put up the price for its leading hyperactivity drug Adderall XR by 20 percent, exceeding analyst expectations and prompting Citigroup to upgrade the company's stock. The price increase outstrips the 7 percent increase for Shire's newer hyperactivity medicine Vyvanse and is expected to encourage...

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Russell said Shire’s share had slipped from 26 percent to 16 percent (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedart...)

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Manabozho

08/06/09 | Report as spam

Concerta?

For nearly ten years, I've had no affiliation with any company in this field. Just an interesting horse race.

The late great ALZA (I'm an unapologetic fan) always had a hard time explaining and selling the full story of controlled release profiles beyond the relatively simple "longer and flatter" pattern connoted by XR / LR / ER designations.

Concerta's release profile has five inflection points over its all-day duration: up, down, flat, up, down/off--the most complex pattern of any oral product ever made by anybody. (Still true?) Sipping studies with kids unmasked the ideal delivery pattern--a quick loading-dose in the AM, followed by a maintenance level, then a rising dose in the afternoon. Producing a manufacturable product with this profile was a crowning achievement of the ALZA development team, while still intact before the J&J acquisition.

This could go either way--Adderall's generic status may flatten the field ("get the cheapest thing--none of the release formulations add value") and take Concerta down with it. Or, the difference between complex-profile "controlled delivery" vs the many forms of "extended delivery" may finally come into focus in this market, and leave Concerta with differentiated status vs a genericized remainder-of-the-field. Place your bets...