On a day when AbbVie revealed booming sales of Skyrizi and Rinvoq and another positive adjustment to its 2025 guidance, the company also is reportedly angling to bolster its long-term prospects by way of an acquisition, according to a Bloomberg report.
The Illinois pharma is discussing a potential $1 billion deal to buy out New York City psychedelic drug specialist Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals. The companies are already partners after AbbVie paid $65 million up front and pledged $1.95 billion in potential milestones last year to help develop candidates for major depressive disorder.
While AbbVie didn’t specifically address the rumored deal during a conference call on Thursday, CEO Rob Michael did discuss in general how the company is thinking about business development.
“When you look at the diverse, high-growth platform we have today, that’s really going to give us the opportunity to drive top-tier performance—a clear line of sight to growth—for at least the next eight years,” Michael said. “It’s really about how we set up the company to grow beyond Skyrizi and Rinvoq.”
Michael added that the company will not lose patent protection for any of its significant growth drivers for the rest of this decade, which gives AbbVie the flexibility to invest more in R&D and to continue to acquire external innovation.
Evidence of this philosophy is backed up by AbbVie’s recent acquisitions, including a $2.1 billion purchase a month ago of Capstan Therapeutics, which is developing in vivo CAR-T therapies for autoimmune and other disorders. In October, AbbVie spent $1.4 billion to acquire Aliada Therapeutics and its novel Alzheimer’s disease candidate.
Gaining Aliada, added to a potential acquisition of Gilgamesh, bolsters AbbVie’s already healthy neuroscience portfolio. That business increased its sales by 24% in the second quarter as each of the company’s top four products “exceeded expectations,” according to AbbVie’s chief commercial officer, Jeff Stewart.
“We are fully investing in neuroscience. We look forward to maintaining our leadership position there,” Stewart said. “We’re gonna keep feeding that engine.”
The engine includes mood stabilizer Vraylar, which was up 16% to $900 million in sales; therapeutic Botox, which was up 14% to $928 million; migraine treatments Ubrelvy, which jumped 47% to $338 million; plus Qulipta, which saw an increase of 77% to $267 million.
As for its immunology juggernauts, AbbVie reported sales of Skyrizi at $4.4 billion, which was a 62% increase year over year, while Rinvoq topped the $2 billion mark in quarterly sales for the first time, for a 42% increase.
AbbVie jacked up its 2025 revenue guidance to $60.5 billion, which is an increase of $800 million from the company’s estimate three months ago. The company has increased its Skyrizi revenue projection by $600 million to $17.1 billion for the year, while decreasing its estimate for fading powerhouse Humira by $500 million to $3 billion for the year, “reflecting biosimilar competition,” CFO Scott Reents said.
AbbVie did not adjust its 2027 projection of $31 billion for combined Skyrizi and Rinvoq sales, even though the products are tracking to exceed the figure.
“We will update that at the appropriate time, but momentum is clearly there,” Michael said, adding that the company typically adjusts long-term guidance at the end of the year, often unveiling adjustments at the J.P. Morgan conference in January.
As for its neuroscience portfolio, AbbVie has added $300 million, putting its projection for the year at $10.5 billion, which includes a $100 million increase for Parkinson’s disease drug Vyalev, which was approved in October of last year and generated $98 million in the second quarter, “reflecting strong international uptake,” Reents said.