AbbVie’s combination bet — SKYRIZI plus a co-formulated future
A $600M guidance raise on 20%+ growth in SKYRIZI, RINVOQ and neuroscience, bankrolled by a leverage-friendly Apogee deal, has the shares up 27% in a quarter.
ABBV · Earnings Call · 2026-07-31
AbbVie’s combination bet — SKYRIZI plus a co-formulated future
One more beat, one more raise
AbbVie’s second quarter was a study in momentum. Adjusted EPS of $3.65 cleared the midpoint by $0.06, net revenues of nearly $17 billion beat by $300 million with 10.2% operational growth, and management lifted full-year revenue guidance again — $600 million above where it started 2026. “AbbVie delivered another excellent quarter. With results once again exceeding our expectations.” — 2026-07-31 The tape agrees: the stock is up 27.4% over the last 90 days, a clean 17-week run that frames the report as an endorsement, not a surprise.
The driver is the familiar ex-Humira engine doing 20%+ laps. SKYRIZI grew 24% operationally to $5.5 billion, RINVOQ 23.7%, and the neuroscience portfolio 20%, with Vraylar, the migraine trio and Parkinson’s all contributing. Full-year callouts now put SKYRIZI at $21.7 billion, up another $100 million on momentum.
The Apogee chess move
The genuinely new item this quarter is the planned acquisition of Apogee Therapeutics — a portfolio of long-acting biologics in atopic dermatitis, respiratory, and other immune-mediated diseases. Management frames it as a bet on the next decade, not this one. This transaction is an excellent fit with our strategy to build and advance a compelling pipeline with new sources of growth to support AbbVie’s performance in the 20 thirties and beyond.
The financing is equally blunt: “We have secured interim financing and expect to issue long term debt in the coming months,” — 2026-07-31 with a commitment to return net leverage to 2x within two-to-three years. The planned Apogee deal carries $0.14 of full-year EPS dilution and adds $100 million to the R&D guide — precisely why the quarter’s beat reads as underlying overperformance more than offsetting the transaction.
Next chapter in IBD
The more structural story is how AbbVie intends to keep SKYRIZI’s curve rising past the IL-23 category’s own maturation. The combination strategy is long-telegraphed — “what you see coming from AbbVie is next-generational therapies and really raising the bar on efficacy” — Roopal Thakkar, Executive Vice President, Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer · 2026-04-29 — but this quarter it moved from hypothesis to trial. Interim data on SKYRIZI plus the anti alpha 4 beta 7 antibody showed a doubling of endoscopic remission at week 24 versus either monotherapy. A large phase 2b platform study across Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis is starting now, run with interim snapshots and a stated plan to pivot to phase 3 early if the signal holds, with first-half-2028 phase 3 kick-off the working target. Management is already pursuing co-formulation so that any eventual launch is a single injection rather than a cocktail — the same maneuver that made quarterly-dosing SKYRIZI a convenience story.
The competitive-resilience narrative has also held for two quarters running. In April, management leaned on audit data to argue that even with new oral entrants, SKYRIZI’s new-brand-rate share kept hitting highs — “…despite incredibly high share, really over 4x basically the in-play share… our NBRx has accelerated and continued to hit all-time highs.” — Jeffrey Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer · 2026-04-29 This quarter the same story runs, with the added kicker that since an oral competitor launched, SKYRIZI’s NBRx trends have actually grown.
Catalysts and the market’s lens
Near-term pipeline catalysts are stacking: SKYRIZI subcutaneous induction for Crohn’s faces an FDA decision this fall (“So far, that review is going according to plan” — 2026-07-31), tivapaden’s Parkinson’s approval is expected in Q3, and Decnupas — AbbVie’s first ADC in hematology — was just approved in the US. In neuroscience, the receptor occupancy discussion recurs as bretasilocin escalates from the safe 100 mg dose to 150 mg. Notably, “receptor occupancy” also ranks among the market’s top global keywords this quarter — a rare instance of an idiosyncratic clinical metric surfacing in the broad tape.
Fundamentals and the un-tariffed beat
On the fundamentals side, the GAAP statement is distorted by the $6.8 billion acquired IPR&D charge taken in Q3 2025 — net income fell to $697 million in Q1 2026, down 46% year-over-year — but the adjusted story management tells (adjusted operating margin near 48%, R&D about 13.6% of sales) is the one the market pays for. Total revenue of $15.0 billion in Q1 2026 kept the 14-year compound ascent going.
What stands out is how un-tariff-driven this quarter is. A broad slice of the market — tech, medical devices, consumer staples — is booking Net tariff refunds from the IEEPA rollback, with dozens of reporters citing “tariff refund benefit.” AbbVie’s beat, by contrast, is primarily organic demand: volume, in-play share capture, and new launches. That is arguably the healthiest kind of beat to print in a tariff-noise-heavy tape — and it helps explain why the shares chose this quarter to break higher.