Outpatient prescriptions slow for MNCs...Viatris in the lead

Viatris shows good performance with ‘Liptor’ … total amount of prescriptions falls in general

MSD·AZ·Novartis all see decline in sales… Lilly·BMS·Santen’s sales rise

Outpatient prescription sales of multinational pharmaceutical companies in Korea had slowed down in general last year.

 

Viatris held the lead among multinational pharmaceutical companies for two consecutive years, but its amount of prescriptions also decreased 0.3% compared to the previous year.

 

The top prescription drug companies such as MSD (Organon), AstraZeneca, Novartis, Astellas, all saw a decline in sales.

 

According to the market research institution UBIST on the 26th, Viatris Korea held the lead in outprescription sales with ₩463.9 billion among multinational manufacturing companies last year.

 

The total prescription amount of the company had fallen 0.3% compared to the ₩465.4 billion in 2020.

 

Lipitor and Celebrex sold ₩205.2 billion and ₩46.3 billion respectively, increasing 0.7% and 3.6%, but Lyrica and Norvasc’s sales fell 3.6% and 1.7% respectively to record ₩69.9 billion and ₩69 billion, respectively.

 

Viatris is a spin-off of Pfizer that was established in 2020 after merging with Mylan in 2020.

 

At the time of the spin-off, the company received Pfizer’s off-patent drugs.

 

With key products such as ‘Lipitor (dyslipidemia treatment),’ ‘Lyrica (neuropathic pain),’ ‘Norvasc (hypertension),’ the company has maintained the lead in outpatient prescriptions ever since its establishment.

 

The outpatient prescription performance of large multinational pharmaceutical companies had decreased in general.

 

MSD (including Organon) recorded ₩437.5 billion in prescriptions last year, which was a 2.4% decrease from the previous year.

 

For MSD, its off-patent drugs and women’s health products are in the process of being transferred to its spin-off Organon.

 

If the product transfers become complete, over half of MSD’s off-patent drugs will be recorded as Organon’s products.

 

These future Organon products account for approximately 58% of the ₩437.5 billion that was sold last year as MSD’s prescriptions.

 

‘Atozet,’ one of the key products that will be transferred to Organon, had recorded ₩86.8 billion in sales last year, which is a 4.9% increase from the previous year.

 

On the other hand, MSD’s DPP-4 inhibitor ‘Januvia family (Januvia, Janumet, Janumet XR)’ did not perform so well.

 

Sales of Janumet fell 4.1% to ₩78.7 billion, Januvia fell 5.7% to ₩45.9 billion.

 

Only sales of Janumet XR rose 2% to ₩51.8 billion.

 

AstraZeneca, which recorded the 3rd most in sales, recorded 424.7 billion last year, a 6.4% decrease from the previous year.

 

The sales drop was affected by the drop in sales of its lead product, the cholesterol drug ‘Crestor,’ falling 3.4% (₩90.8 billion).

 

Fortunately, the outpatient prescription sales of its SGLT-2 inhibitor ‘Forxiga’ and combo ‘Xigduo’ had driven the outpatient prescription sales of AstraZeneca.

 

The two products sold ₩42.6 billion and ₩37 billion, an 11.9% and 21.1% increase, respectively.

 

Novartis’s sales performance also slowed down, recording a 0.1% decrease from the previous year to ₩422.5 billion in sales.

 

Products that sold over ₩10 billion in outpatient prescriptions last year fell to 8 from the 11 in 2016.

 

All companies other than Boehringer Ingelheim among the Top 5 grossing companies among multinational pharmaceuticals saw a decline in prescription sales last year.

 

However, companies that sold NOAC, antidiabetic, and eye drops such as Daiichi Sankyo, BMS, Janssen, Lilly, and Santen fared better in the previous year.

 

Daiichi Sankyo recorded ₩181.7 billion in sales, a 7% increase from the previous year, benefitting from the 16% sales increase of the NOAC anticoagulant ‘Lixiana.’ Sales of BMs’s prescription drugs also increased 7.6% to record ₩181.7 billion, with sales of the NOAC ‘Eliquis’ rising 18.6%.

 

Lilly’s sales also increased 16.1% to record ₩104.9 billion, with the even expansion in sales of GLP-1 analog ‘Trulicity’ antidepressant ‘Cymbalta,’ JAK inhibitor ‘Olumiant,’ CDK 4/6 inhibitor ‘Verzenio.’ Also, the ‘no Japan’ boycott that started in 2019 in Korea did not affect sales of Japanese pharmaceutical companies.

 

Other than Astellas, other Japanese pharmaceutical companies saw steady growth since 2019.

 

In particular, outpatient prescriptions of Santen Pharmaceutical rose 42.3% from ₩68.4 billion in 2018 to ₩97.3 billion last year.

 

Sales of Santen Pharmaceutical’s eyedrop ‘Cosopt-S’ that it received the license from MSD arose significantly, and prescriptions of the eye drop ‘Cravit’ and the glaucoma treatment ‘Taflotan-S,’ as well as eye drop ‘Ikervis’ had expanded greatly.