AbbVie’s management lowered its quarterly and full-year guidance in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday, citing research and development costs and milestone payments to partners.
AbbVie ABBV,
said it will be required to make $243 million in milestone payments to in-process research and development (IPR&D) partners it acquired in the fourth quarter, bringing the total to $697 million for the year. Accounting for IPR&D and milestone payments was recently required by the SEC for pharmaceutical companies because the regulator believes the preparation of performance measures that exclude ordinary expenses is misleading.
This charge is expected to reduce AbbVie’s ABBV.
Adjusted earnings were 14 cents per share, or $3.51, down from previous forecasts of $3.65 per share. On average, analysts surveyed by FactSet expected him to earn $3.65 per share on earnings of $15.31 billion.
read: Drug company is making accounting changes after SEC cracks down on Biogen
AbbVie now expects $13.70 to $13.74 per share and expects milestone charges to decrease from $13.84 to $13.88 per share, to $3.51 to $3.55 per share. Analysts had expected him to make $13.85 per share on earnings of $58.29 billion.
On Thursday, CytomX Therapeutics Inc. CTMX,
He said it was “advancing clinical activity” in a trial with cancer treatment candidate AbbVie. Requests for comment on whether CytomX has received payments for these milestones were not returned by the time of publication.
S&P 500 Index SPX,
Tech stocks Nasdaq Composite Index COMP rose 2.2%
increased by 2.6%.
The company said it “does not forecast the costs of the acquired IPR&D and milestones due to the uncertainty of the future occurrence and timing of these transactions.”
AbbVie plans to report quarterly results on February 9, before the market opens.