Aspreva shares spike on Q4 revenues

Gillian Shaw
Vancouver Sun
February 3, 2006

Shares in Aspreva Pharmaceuticals Corp. shot up a staggering 26 per cent Thursday in the wake of preliminary results that showed the Victoria company chalked up revenues of $76 million US last year, well up from the $65 million to $70 million it had previously forecast.

Estimated sales for the fourth quarter were $45 million US in unaudited figures that were issued ahead of the company's full financial results, slated for release Feb. 8. The company said it made public the unaudited numbers after its partner, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, released its year-end results earlier this week.

"The actual fourth-quarter results came in stronger than we anticipated, and that, combined with our previous guidance and combined with the fact that Roche also released yesterday [Wednesday] their year-end results, we thought it would be important to put our preliminary results out there for people to see," said Richard Glickman, Aspreva's chairman and chief executive officer.

Investors clearly liked what they saw, driving up shares to a high of $29 in trading Thursday, up from Wednesday's close of $22.80, before closing at $28.78 -- a climb of almost $6 in one day and up from the company's 52-week high of $23.08.

Aspreva has enjoyed a meteoric rise with its innovative business model, in which it takes an existing drug and finds new applications for it among diseases that are underserved in treatments and cures.

In its first foray into the public markets, the company went on both the Nasdaq and Toronto exchanges and raised more than $100 million, more money than any Canadian biotech. It partnered with Roche, getting rights to develop and commercialize Roche's CellCept for use in autoimmune-disease applications.

The strategy enabled it to leapfrog the long and costly process of developing a drug from scratch and vaulted Aspreva, which was launched in 2001, into the ranks of profitable biotechs last August.