4. Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS)
Short Interest as % of Shares Outstanding: 0.28%
Number of Hedge Fund Investors In Q2 2024: 30
Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) is the Swiss pharma giant headquartered in Basel. It sells prescription drugs for a variety of ailments such as those involving the liver, heart, nervous system, and kidneys. Right now, its two hottest drugs are Scemblix and Kisqali, which are used to help patients with leukemia and breast cancer and as an adjuvant, respectively. This means that Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS)’s performance is somewhat tied to these drugs, as well as other hot products such as its prostate cancer drug Pluvicto and heart disease drug Leqvio. Particularly for Pluvicto, Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) has to fork out royalty payments which means that the firm has to carefully map out its sales estimates and marketing expenses to ensure the drug remains a money maker. The firm’s global footprint also places a wide market at its disposal, allowing it to target multiple geographies with its drugs. At the same time, Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) has to keep focus on R&D since its status as a leader in developing branded drugs means that the firm loses revenue once patents expire – requiring it to continuously launch new products.
Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS)’s management shared key details for its pipeline during the Q2 2024 earnings call:
“Turning to our renal portfolio, as you all know, we’ve been working to build an attractive portfolio to manage IgAN, C3G and related renal diseases.
And as part of that effort, we acquired atrasentan. And in the Phase III ALIGN-IgAN study, we announced at ERA in May, a 36% proteinuria reduction relative to placebo. We’re very excited about this medicine as we think it can be a foundational medicine to provide hemodynamic and nephroprotective potential for patients and physicians. It’s a clinically meaningful proteinuria reduction. We see a very favorable safety profile. We think up to 50% of patients with persistent proteinuria progress to kidney failure. So important that these patients get better options. We’ve submitted to FDA. And of course, the study continues in a blinded fashion to 2026 when we would read out the eGFR. So looking forward to launching this medicine in 2025. Alongside that, with iptacopan, we also announced at ERA, the full result Phase III APPEAR-C3G study, which demonstrated 35% proteinuria reduction relative to placebo.
You can see the design on the left-hand side of the slide. On the right-hand side, you see that impressive minus 30% versus an increase of 7.6% in the placebo arm. We saw numerical improvements in eGFR, favorable safety profile overall. This would be the first treatment — potential treatment targeting the complement pathway in C3G. And again, in these patients, 50% of patients develop kidney failure requiring dialysis. Now importantly, today, we’re also announcing that we have end of study results for this medicine at the 12-month time point that data is consistent with the 6-month data, which now allows us to move forward with the filing in the second half of 2024, with an expected launch next year. We’ll present that end-of-study data at an upcoming medical meeting.”
