![]()
- Oil Next Week: What Traders Will Be Watching

- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Court Rejects 'Clawbacks' for Alleged Stanford Victims
- Tax Credit Sparking First-Time Home Sales: Realtors
- Investors Cut Back US Stocks for Bigger Growth Abroad
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- White House Plans to Freeze Spending to Cut Deficit
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- Oil Next Week: What Traders Will Be Watching
- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
- Fed Reform? Not So Fast.
MOST SHARED
- Seeking Innovation in Health Care
- Today's Market Action
- Driving Health Care Innovation
- Herbalife Vs. Hedge Funds
- Israel: Leader of Business Innovation
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great
- Low Interest Rate Investing
- Week Ahead: Investors Go for Quality, Assess Recovery
Gilead Sciences said on Wednesday its first-quarter profit rose 55% amid higher sales of its drugs for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The biotechnology company said net income rose to $407.4 million, or 85 cents a share, from $262.7 million, or 55 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts expected a profit of 80 cents a share.
"It's another solid quarter for Gilead ... they keep putting up great numbers," said analyst Michael King of Rodman & Renshaw.
The company continues to expect full-year 2007 drug sales of $3.4 billion to $3.5 billion, Chief Financial Officer John Milligan said on a conference call.
"We would prefer to wait until the end of the second quarter to update the guidance," he said, noting first-quarter sales of anti-fungal drug Ambisome and hepatitis drug Hepsera were stronger than the company had expected.
Total revenue rose 48% to $1.03 billion, exceeding the $992.7 million forecast by analysts.
Sales of HIV drugs rose 56% to $705.1 million, including $345.9 million for the two-drug combination HIV pill Truvada, and $190.2 million for Atripla, a once-daily pill approved by U.S. regulators last July that layers Truvada with Bristol-Myers Squibb's Sustiva.
First-quarter sales of Viread and Emtriva, the two older HIV drugs used in the combination pills, fell 16% to $160.7 million and by 16% to $8.3 million, respectively, as patients switched to the newer treatments.
Hepsera sales rose 35% to $71.3 million, while Ambisome sales rose 14% to $61.5 million.
Foster City, California,-based Gilead also collects royalties on sales by Roche for Tamiflu, an antiviral treatment being stockpiled as a potential treatment for bird flu.
First-quarter royalty and contract revenue more than tripled to $188.2 million, including $167.9 million from Roche for fourth-quarter 2006 Tamiflu sales.
The company said quarterly research and development costs rose to $130.1 million from $88.4 million, while sales and administrative expense rose to $166.6 million from $142.5 million.
Gilead is awaiting a June decision from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on its application for ambrisentan, a drug developed by Myogen for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. If approved, the drug could generate annual sales of more than $1 billion, analysts estimate.
Gilead's shares are up more than 21% so far this year, compared with a gain of nearly 8% for the AMEX Biotech Index. The stock, which closed at $78.43, was up slightly in after hours trading.
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- For the chief of cable company Comcast, growth has been about making deals – generally very large deals.
- Some companies may start using insurance to shift carbon risk from their balance sheets to maybe... yours?
- The president and founder of Genesis Today wants to improve America’s health, and thinks Wal-Mart can help.
- Switzerland's privacy watchdog is taking legal action to force Google to make changes to its Street View service.
- A wealthy, distracted Texas driver crashed his million-dollar Bugatti Veyron sports car into a salt marsh, say police.












