Business
Ligand Reports Second Quarter 2020 Financial Results
Raises 2020 Financial Guidance Conference Call with Slides Begins at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time Today SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ligand Pharmaceuticals
About this update from Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated
[{"type":"text","content":"\nRaises 2020 Financial Guidance \n\n\nConference Call with Slides Begins at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time Today\n\n SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nLigand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: LGND) today reported financial results for the three and six months ending June 30, 2020 and provided an operating forecast and program updates. Ligand management will host a conference call with slides today beginning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time to discuss this announcement and answer questions.\n\n\n“Outstanding second quarter financial results and operating execution have laid the foundation for our strong outlook for the rest of 2020 and beyond. We are exceeding our plans and expectations across the board, despite the challenges created by the pandemic. Our role in supporting treatments for COVID-19 includes numerous OmniAb®, Captisol® and Vernalis-based product candidates. In particular, sales of Captisol to partners advancing remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19 are driving upside to the business, and we expect Captisol demand to increase significantly over the next couple of years,” said John Higgins, Chief Executive Officer of Ligand. “Given our outlook for Captisol, in early June we announced to all of our customers Ligand’s plans to deploy up to $60 million over the next year to increase our annual production capacity more than eight-fold.”\n\n\nHiggins continued, “Our partnered product portfolio continues to grow and advance toward major late-stage milestones marked in particular by successes with OmniAb, Ligand’s industry-leading antibody discovery platform. We now have more than 80 OmniAb-related partnered programs, representing over 40% of our pipeline and an active news flow of late-stage and regulatory events. We continue to be very active with new technology licensing, we closed the acquisition of our new ion-channel discovery unit, and we expanded the collaboration with Roche for CNS-related targets. Lastly, revenue performed well across all segments, and going forward we expect continued growth in our royalty revenue due to commercial expansion, increased use based on new clinical data and potential new product launches. With our high-quality portfolio of partnered programs and a strong balance sheet, Ligand looks to future growth with confidence and optimism. We anticipate hosting a major investor update and business outlook ...