Sales of the ground breaking Cystic Fibrosis drug, KAFTRIO, was the main driver behind Vertex Pharmaceutical’s Irish revenues surging to $2.3bn last year.
New accounts show that revenues at the Dublin registered Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Ireland) Ltd last year increased by 18% from $1.95bn to $2.3bn.
The Irish company fulfils all EU wide sales and the firm now sells a suite of Cystic Fibrosis drugs that includes Kalydeco and Orkambi across the EU.
Currently the firm’s four main CF medicines are used to treat three quarters of the 92,000 people with CF in North America, Europe and Australia.
Against the background of the sharp increase in revenues at the Dublin arm, sales, pre-tax profits at the company increased by 56% to $13.7m.
Globally, the Vertex’s sales of of KAFTRIO/TRIKATA accounted for 90.6% or $8.8bn or global sales of $9.89 billion where the Irish based unit accounted for 23.4% of global sales.
The Irish firm employs six people and pay last year totalled $1.3m in staff costs, made up of salary costs of $941,000, $253,000 in share based payments and $113,000 in social security costs.
The directors for the Dublin unit state that during the year the company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and affiliated companies further expanded access to the group’s portfolio of CF medicines for younger age groups in European countries.
The directors state that during the year the group completed Phase 3 development of a triple combination of vanzacaftor/tezacaftor/deutivacaftor, which, they say, has demonstrated the potential to provide additional clinical benefits, as well as once-daily dosing, to people with CF who have at least one mutation in their CFTR gene that is responsive to CFTR modulators.
“Global regulatory filings for this new triple combination regimen have been submitted in 2024,” they say.
Globally, vertex expects its revenues to increase this year as a result of the continued performance of KAFTRIO/TRIKATA, label expansion into young age groups for previously approved products and expanded access to Vertex’s medicines.
The directors of the Irish company did not receive any pay in 2023.
However, the pay package for the CEO and president of Vertex’s global operations, Reshma Kewalramani, last year totalled $20.59m – an increase of 30% on the 2022 pay package of $15.86m.
The CEO’s 2023 pay package included stock awards of $15m along with non-equity bonus pay of $4m.
At the end of December last, shareholder funds totalled $425.94m. Cash funds increased sharply from $88m to $262m.