Cresemba's sales momentum continues

Basilea announced this morning the receipt of another milestone from partner Pfizer with respect to Cresemba's sales performance in the Asia Pacific and China regions.

The performance of Cresemba in these markets is important given the sheer size of the opportunity, while reflecting that Cresemba remains early in its life cycle in these important territories. Furthermore, as Cresemba is expected to face loss of exclusivity in major territories of the US and Europe from Q4 2027, continued growth of Cresemba outside of these geographies becomes increasingly important. In the interim, we note the recent launch of the company's 5th generation cephalosporin antibiotic, Zevtera, in the US through partner Innoviva Specialty Therapeutics, targeting the significant unmet need of Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (SAB) as well as severe skin infections and community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. Given our peak sales forecast of $250m in the SAB indication alone, our hope is that Zevtera-derived revenues will help replace lost revenues from Cresemba's loss of exclusivity.

Ultimately, we remain confident in the longer-term future of the anti-infective franchise at Basilea with the novel antifungal fosmanogepix moving through Phase 3 evaluation in candidaemia/invasive candidiasis, with invasive moulds due to follow shortly. We have previously stated that the profile and applicability of fosmanogepix to a broader range of key fungal infections, including most of the infections on the WHO critical list, suggests that the commercial potential of fosmanogepix could be significantly higher than that of Cresemba. Consequently, our peak sales forecast for fosmanogepix is circa $1.2bn.

It is also important to consider the attraction of BARDA and the Other Transaction Agreement, which Basilea has secured. With funding of up to $268m, this agreement is clearly a significant boost for the anti-infective ambitions at Basilea. Not only does this agreement provide an important endorsement of the pipeline, but it also provides significant financial flexibility and should help de-risk the entire anti-infective platform.

We have a DCF-derived fair value of CHF120 per share, compared to the current share price of CHF46.

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