The state”™s largest biotechnology company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Greenburgh, ended its first full year of profitability with $415 million in fourth-quarter revenue and $1.4 billion in revenue for all of 2012. The company”™s quarterly and annual revenue were up 237 percent and 214 percent respectively from fourth-quarter and full-year revenue in 2011.
Regeneron reported about $470.4 million in fourth-quarter net income, after losing $53.4 million in the same quarter in 2011. Net income for 2012 was approximately $750.3 million, compared with income losses that totaled about $221.8 million in 2011.
Headquartered on The Landmark at Eastview life sciences campus, Regeneron saw its explosive growth driven by U.S. sales of Eylea, a drug injected in the eye for treatment of macular diseases. The company reported net Eylea sales of $276 million in the fourth quarter and $838 million for all of 2012.
Bayer Healthcare, Regeneron”™s foreign markets collaborator on Eylea, reported $19 million in net product sales outside the U.S. in the last fourth quarter. Eylea in November was approved in the European Union and received pricing approval in Japan for use by patients with wet macular degeneration.
Bayer HealthCare in 2012 paid Regeneron $25 million in milestone payments for foreign regulatory approvals of Eylea and Zaltrap, a drug used intravenously for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.
Regeneron last year also received a $50 million milestone payment for Zaltrap from the company”™s Paris-based global collaborator, Sanofi. Since sales of Zaltrap began in the U.S. last August, Sanofi recorded net sales of $32 million for 2012, including $23 million in the fourth quarter.
Sanofi this month received approval in the European Union for Zaltrap”™s use in a chemotherapy infusion. The approval was soon followed by Sanofi”™s notice that it plans to buy Regeneron stock at a volume that will give it more than $500 million of voting shares. Sanofi”™s partnership agreement with Regeneron limits the French company”™s stock purchases to no more than 30 percent of Regeneron”™s outstanding shares.
Dr. Leonard Schleifer, Regeneron president and CEO, in the recent company report called 2012 “a truly transformative year” for the company he founded 25 years ago. With Eylea recently approved in the U.S. for an additional use in treatment of macular disease and recently encoded in Medicare prescription billing, Schleifer said the company forecasts net sales of Eylea in the U.S. this year at $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion.
