Zolgensma sales hit $160M in first full quarter on market

BASEL, Switzerland  — AveXis Inc.’s parent company reported that its flagship drug far outpaced sales estimates in its first full quarter on the market and before it started making the medicine in its Longmont plant.

Novartis AG (NYSE: NVS) said Zolgensma, a gene-therapy drug for children with certain versions of spinal muscular atrophy, generated $160 million in revenue, according to Q3 earnings reports out Tuesday. That beat analyst sales estimates of around $96 million for the quarter, according to data from Seeking Alpha.

Avexis, which is based in a Chicago suburb, is retrofitting a six-building, 692,000-square-foot campus in Longmont to make Zolgensma alongside its current plant in Raleigh, North Carolina. The company paid $30 million for the former AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN) facility in March. It hopes to start production sometime before the end of the year.

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The company and Novartis came under fire over the summer, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed that Avexis researchers falsified animal trials for the drug and didn’t notify regulators of the breach in time. While the FDA said it still believes Zolgensma is safe and effective for human use, it said it could pursue civil or criminal penalties, and Novartis became the target of bipartisan outrage.

The drug is the most expensive in the world, costing $2.1 million for a single dose.

It’s possible Zolgensma sales will increase next year, as European Union regulators are expected to issue a decision on approval sometime in Q1 2020, while Japanese regulators could issue their decision sometime in the first half of next year.