Big Pharma Earnings Watch

GSK Completes The Sweep: Joins Fellow Drug Maker Giants In Beating Q1 Profit Forecasts

One more pharmaceutical giant reported its first-quarter earnings today and surpassed expectations.  The forecast-topping announcement completed a sweep for Big Pharma.  Ten of the largest drug makers have now all bested earnings expectations for the first quarter of 2019.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the largest five drug manufacturers in the world, reported to investors that it surpassed earnings expectations and profited $10.1 billion in the first quarter of 2019.

What helped drive these astronomical profits?  Price hikes of course.

According to a study from Rx Savings Solutions earlier this year, GSK was one of more than three dozen drug manufacturers that raised prices at the start of 2019.

As The Wall Street Journal reported in January, the company confirmed that it would raise prices on three dozen of its drugs.

Big Pharma has been in the hot seat in Washington.  Lawmakers have pledged to rein in out-of-control drug prices in the 116th Congress.  Substantive action has taken shape, as a number of bills that will crack down on Big Pharma’s anticompetitive abuses have begun to advance in Congress.  Just yesterday, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary advanced the bipartisan CREATES Act, a positive step towards getting more generics and biosimilars to market faster.

Despite immense pressure, pharmaceutical companies are still following the same playbook – raising prices on the backs of patients.  These price hikes prove that Big Pharma will continue putting profits over patients.  GSK joins Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AbbVie, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson in all surpassing earnings forecasts for Q1 after repeatedly raising prices on prescription drugs American patients rely on to survive and enjoy quality of life.

There is still more work to be done, but momentum is on the side of American patients.  CSRxP will continue to work with Congress to enact bipartisan, market-based solutions that will lower prices by boosting competition.

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