Pharmaceutical company Amarin Corp saw its share prices surge upward on Friday following the marketing approval of its triglyceride drug Vascepa. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the Dublin-based company approval to market Vascepa to a wider audience, spurring a frenzy of investors that sent the company's shares to its highest level in more than a decade.
Amarin Corp stocks had surged by more than 5 percent before it was halted for half-day trading on Friday. The company's depository receipts were halted before noon with shares trading at around $24.12 per share. The closing price was the highest the company has reached since 2007. Share prices continued to surge as the trading was resumed in the late afternoon.
The company's Vascepa drug was approved in 2012 to treat patients with high triglyceride levels. With the approval, the drug is now the first FDA-approved treatment aimed at reducing the cardiovascular risk for patients with elevated triglyceride levels. The drug is typically used as an add-on treatment to statin therapy.
According to a statement released by the company following the approval, its drug should now be able to better help millions of high-risk patients in the United States. In anticipation of the marketing approval, Amarin had reportedly doubled in salesforce since the start of the year. It later announced after the approval that it will be increasing its total sales force in the United States to around 800 sales representatives.
Following the approval, the company also upgraded its revenue outlook for this year and the next. Amarin increased its revenue outlook from a range of $380 million to $420 million to a range of $410 million to $425 million for 2019. Next year, the company announced that it expects its revenues to be between $650 million to $700 million, mostly driven by the sales of Vascepa in the United States.
The company's forecasts were in line with analysts' expectations, albeit mostly in the lower end of the range. Analysts' expectations for the company's full-year revenues for this year stand at around $410.3 million, while revenue estimates for 2020 are at around $654.6 million.
Amarin mentioned in the same statement that it expects Vascepa to generate "multiple billions of dollars" in the coming years. The company explained that historically, therapies for chronic conditions often take multiple years before fully penetrating the market. For this reason, the company stated that it will not be providing revenue guidance beyond 2020. Amarin is scheduled to hold a conference call this week to discuss the approval and its business moving forward.
