The US tax reform has saved Abbvie nearly 96% of taxes compared to 2017.
Pharmaceutical companies have benefited tremendously from the Trump tax reforms passed early in 2018, and none more than AbbVie. The company owed just $57 million for the first nine months of 2018 – that’s only 4.5% of what it paid ($1.28 billion) in 2017 for the same period. Combined with better-than-expected sales for the cancer drug Imbruvica (ibrutinib) developed in partnership with J&J, earnings and guidance for AbbVie are also higher than expected.
In the first nine months of 2018, international sales of Humira rose 10% to $4.95 billion, and the company expects total sales for the year to reach $6.3 billion, according to CFO Bill Chase. In addition, AbbVie has candidates in the pipeline that it believes will help the firm become more diversified and less dependent on Humira revenues, including Venclexta (venetoclax), a first-line treatment for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia that is in phase 3 trials and Orilissa (elagolix), a Neurocine-developed drug for pain associated with endometriosis that received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.
