UPDATE: Amgen Delays Earnings

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Amgen Inc. on Wednesday said it would delay reporting its first-quarter earnings until April 23, four days later than originally planned, so it could include data from a clinical trial that could either bolster or further erode the biotech’s beleaguered stock.


The earnings delay comes a day after Amgen announced it was replacing its chief financial officer, Richard Nanula, who has been with the company since 2001.


Amgen’s share price is down 25 percent since mid-January, closing at $56.34 today on the Nasdaq. The Thousand Oaks-based biotech over the last few months has suffered a series of setbacks concerning potential expanded uses for its top-selling anemia franchise, which accounts for half the company’s sales.


The company said it hopes to be able to report initial top-line results from a highly anticipated study of Aranesp to fight anemia among patients with small-cell lung cancer who were undergoing chemotherapy.


Industry surveys indicate that doctors have become more cautious, reflected in slowing orders, following a series of studies suggesting that anemia drugs like Aranesp could feed the growth of tumors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month required Amgen to add a warning to Aranesp’s label directing doctors to use the lowest dose possible to get the desired outcome.


Aranesp, a successor to the company’s first drug Epogen, had sales of around $4.1 billion last year. The company said off-label uses accounted for about $560 million of Aranesp global sales.


The company is cooperating with a informal inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission looking into why executives during a January conference call did not discuss negative data they were aware of from Danish study of head and neck cancer patients. The findings later were reported in the trade press.

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