The fourth-quarter 2019 earnings report of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. was notable for the stock market’s nonplussed response. This was despite Alnylam’s first product – Onpattro (patisiran), the world’s first approved RNAi drug for the orphan indication hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis – growing revenue by 21% over the third quarter of 2019, after 18 months on the market. Together with $150m in the first ever quarterly revenues from its second approved product Givlaari (givosiran) – for the rare inherited indication acute hepatic porphyria – and collaboration revenues, Alnylam’s total fourth-quarter 2019 revenues were $71.68m. Total revenue just missed analysts’ consensus estimates of $71.92m while its quarterly loss of $221m, or $1.98 per share, beat analysts’ estimates of $2.22 per share.
Alnylam’s stock price spent most of the day of its results announcement down 2-3% more than the NASDAQ Biotech Index, although both stock and index finished the day close to where they started. Perhaps the market’s lack of enthusiasm for Alnylam’s results was due to the slight miss on revenues, or by their modest 9% increase from a year earlier
