BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (BMRN) Earnings Call Transcript
August 12, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Whitney Ijem. I'm one of the biotech analysts here at Canaccord. And it's my pleasure to introduce BioMarin Pharmaceutical this morning. And on behalf of BioMarin, we have Brian Mueller, CFO. Thank you for being here.
So just to start off high level for anybody who's not familiar, for anybody who that might be, I don't know, BioMarin is a household name. But for anybody who is not familiar, can you briefly introduce the story, like who is BioMarin currently? And where are you trying to go over the next 5, 10 years?
Yes. Thanks, Whitney, for having us. Really glad to be here. Thanks, everyone, joining in person and those online. Yes. So I do think there are some folks that may not be familiar with BioMarin. So I thought I'd give a little bit of maybe the past, present and future, and then we can get into more details in the business. So BioMarin Pharmaceutical is one of the largest rare disease-focused companies. The company has been operating for a bit over 25 years. And it's interesting back when we started our journey, there were only a handful of rare disease companies. There was BioMarin, there was Genzyme, Shire, TKT. However, those other companies are now part of larger pharmaceutical companies because they were acquired over the years. And while now there's hundreds of other rare disease companies, BioMarin spent the last couple of decades plus growing and scaling while retaining that rare disease focus. We've got 6 first-in-disease medicines, 9 approved therapies overall. We've got higher-than-average success rates in the biopharmaceutical sector, and that's largely because of our focus, not just rare disease, but genetically defined conditions. So we ensure when we embark on research programs that we understand the underlying genetic causation of the condition. And then we design a precision medicine aimed directly at that genetic cause. That comes with a number of competitive advantages in biopharma. First of all, rare disease patient populations are often smaller, which means smaller studies, which can be run in shorter amounts of time. There are certain regulatory incentives like orphan drug protection and other accelerators in the regulatory pathways and a lot of community support. So rare disease patient advocacy is very strong. So we partner with regulators, the patient communities, and that's been a significant part of our success. But now we've grown and scaled the business into close to an expected $4 billion of revenue this year. We've built global world-class biopharmaceutical capabilities. We have in-house manufacturing, end-to-end research and development and commercial capabilities. We operate in over 80 countries worldwide. So again, rare disease at scale and one of the leaders. Shifting into the present. We just reported our Q2 financial results last week. We had nearly $1 billion of revenue for the quarter, which was 20% growth year-over-year. We raised our guidance to $3.875 billion to $3.925 billion for total revenue. We also raised our non-GAAP earnings per share guidance from $4.90 to $5.10. Another significant announcement last week was in closing the acquisition of Amicus Therapeutics. During the quarter, we shared our plans for the Amicus business. Amicus is a rare disease-focused company based here on the East Coast. They had 2 commercial assets, Galafold for Fabry disease and Pombiliti and Opfolda for Pompe disease. These are both high-growth assets and very complementary to BioMarin's business. We announced the acquisition back in December and closed it during Q2. Part of the strategic rationale for this transaction was taking these 2 high-growth medicines in a small company into the BioMarin infrastructure and global platform where they should actually be more valuable. And what we shared last week was our aspirations for the Amicus business. We shared our view on peak revenues for Galafold, which is $1.4 billion and for Pombiliti and Opfolda, $1.2 billion, both in the mid- to late 2030s, respectively. We shared that -- we shared our view on synergies. We believe that we can synergize approximately 50% of the legacy Amicus operating cost base. Again, 2 companies together, BioMarin at scale. We have the platform. So when it comes to infrastructure, most of the synergies are coming from general and administrative expense and other business support. That's where the bulk of this 50% synergies comes from. Very importantly, we preserved and left intact. And if anything, we're investing in the Amicus sales and marketing, all of those customer-facing capabilities. Again, these products are in their high-growth phase. So it was important that we preserve that growth and invest in it. So we weren't aggressive with any synergies within sales and marketing. So with that revenue growth profile of the Amicus business and with some of those cost synergies, what that results in is a substantially accretive business over time and significantly increased cash flows. We shared that we accelerated our deleveraging target. BioMarin took on leverage debt for the first time to do this acquisition. And at the time of the acquisition, we shared a leverage ratio target of less than 2.5x within 2 years of closing the transaction, which was again just back in April. After doing our work on both that revenue growth and the synergies, we accelerated that deleveraging target by roughly a year, and we think we can be at that less than 2.5x by the middle of next year. And the last thing on the accretion is, again, the combination of the revenue with those cost synergies over time, over the next few years, say, by 2030, we think the Amicus business can operate at a 60% operating margin, also contributing to what is already a healthy BioMarin operating margin. So that's some of the present. And in the future, our strategy is to realize the growth potential of the business, lots of commercial execution to do, both on our base legacy business and in successfully growing and completing the Amicus integration. I should have mentioned in the sort of past to present, we also transformed the company over the last couple of years, significant changes in our focus, in our operating model. We substantially improved our profitability and cash flow. It was great timing that we did that because now when we layer on the Amicus business, it's on top of this reengineered transformed BioMarin operating model. And so we're expecting to generate significant growth in revenue, earnings per share, but most importantly, cash flow because cash flow is the vehicle to be able to reinvest in the business. Our top capital allocation priority is to continue to invest in future growth and thereby shareholder value. We talk about sometimes this virtuous cycle where we're growing and reinvesting in the right assets, both our internal innovation and inorganic business development external innovation, continuing to grow and reinvesting. So again, this virtuous cycle with a flywheel effect, that's the strategy.
Yes. Excellent. Okay. Very, very helpful and a lot to dig in there. I think we'll stick with Amicus and start there. So as you mentioned, delevering 1 year sooner than originally thought. You touched on it, but can you give a little bit more color around what is driving that? Is it really upside on the revenue front? Is it more synergies? Or are there other levers that are kind of different as you got in there versus...
Yes, of course. Thanks, Whitney. Great question. Yes, it's multiple levers. So I might start with where I kind of finished the opening remarks with that transformed BioMarin-based business. We've gotten to a level where we're generating not just significant levels of operating cash flow, free cash flow, but that EBITDA base for leveraged debt. So even without the Amicus business, we've got a healthy growing solid base of cash earnings, if you will, and growing into next year. On the leverage target itself, I'll share that with BioMarin as a first-time debt issuer, it was very important that we go on the record at the announcement of the transaction with a sound financial policy. That was at less than 2.5x within 2 years. I will share that there was some room in that. If you were to model out our EBITDA, and the debt we raised was about $3.6 billion. We also have a $600 million convertible note on the books, but that actually matures next May. So that helps deleverage a bit in itself. So it was a healthy situation to begin with is my point. And then to your question, once we layer on the Amicus business, because we are growing revenues, we think there's more of an opportunity than, again, Amicus stand-alone, we can get more into what those levers are as well. But then with the cost synergies, the combined EBITDA profile over the next 12 months really got us comfortable that we can accelerate that deleveraging target.
Okay. Really, really interesting. And then going back to the revenue guidance for Galafold and Pom-Op, I'm just going to use the short version, Pom-Op.
Sure. I might as well.
Yes, exactly. $1.4 billion for Galafold and $1.2 billion for Pom-Op. I think that was ahead of consensus and kind of how we had all been thinking about it. So can you talk us through what's driving that as well? And maybe as you're doing that, probably part of the answer is around retaining the existing sales force and the relationships and just kind of help us understand how all that works together.
Yes, of course. Yes, maybe picking up where you left off. So really important to retain, preserve and grow the capabilities because both of these medicines are still in their high-growth phase. The capability that applies to both Galafold and Pom-Op is the BioMarin global scale and capabilities. There's a couple of elements of that. First is global reach. I mentioned a few moments ago that BioMarin commercializes its product in 80 markets globally. Amicus had previously commercialized Galafold in about 40 markets and Pom-Op in about 15 markets. So that global expansion is a huge opportunity for us. To be clear, we're not expecting to take both products into all 80 markets. Some of those are small and unique to just a couple of assets in our portfolio. But nonetheless, the pure geographic expansion is one lever. Second is just some of those global capabilities. It's not uncommon for earlier-stage commercial companies as they're growing when they do expand internationally to use a partnership distributor model. BioMarin does use distributors, but in most of our countries, we've got BioMarin capabilities on the ground. This is both marketing and traditional commercial, market access, medical, regulatory. When you get out to several of these international markets, those are very complex. They take time. But BioMarin, again, has been doing it for over 20 years. So that should also be not just an accelerant, but an improved capabilities. And then a couple of nuances on the medicines themselves. For Galafold and Fabry, it's believed that Fabry is still significantly underdiagnosed. And this has been one of the areas where BioMarin has built outstanding capabilities over the years, which is improving diagnosis. When I mentioned in my opening remarks that 6 of our medicines were first in disease, that's not just novel science and bringing a therapy to these disease areas that had no therapy available before. On the actual commercialization front, we actually had to build those markets. There's often not a treatment home or again, advocacy may be dispersed. So building these markets is what BioMarin has done. Fabry, Galafold was not the first to market, so that you can say that the Fabry market was already built, but this underdiagnosis, we believe, is a big opportunity. We're going to be working on things like AI-enabled patient identification, newborn screening globally and in the U.S., that's done at the state level in the U.S. And then familial genetic line screening because Fabry is genetic and can be -- manifest itself in different levels of severity and different levels of symptoms. It's been seen already that if you do genetic family cascade screening, one patient can lead to many. So that -- those type of efforts, again, this is the type of infrastructure that we've built over the years. And for Pombiliti and Opfolda and Pompe disease, it's a little bit of a different strategy. That's more of a switching strategy. Again, there are other products on the market for Pompe, traditional enzyme therapies. However, it's been seen that the efficacy for some of the existing therapies can wane. And there's an emerging body of real-world evidence for improved outcomes with Pombiliti and Opfolda. So getting that messaging out there through the medical community, driving these switches is -- plus the geographic expansion is the strategy for Pom-Op.
Okay. So while the commercial team is executing on all that, that's going well and harvesting those synergies, can you talk to us about BD and where you're going next? I think again, when the deal was initially announced and your -- the delevering time line was a little bit longer, the goal, you kind of said, well, we're going to say -- we're still interested in BD, but it will be smaller kind of pipeline. Does the delevering time line change impact that at all? Or kind of what's the mandate for the BD team now?
Yes. Thanks, Whitney. Great question. Yes, I'd say a couple of keynotes on the business development strategy and as it relates to the deleveraging strategies, as you noted. So first of all, the Amicus transaction was unique for us. Again, very large, close to $5 billion of total purchase price, commercial stage assets, a company already at somewhat of a reasonable scale as they had several hundred million in revenue. And again, we're a global company themselves. But because of that high strategic fit and the ability to transact, that was the right transaction to do last year. In the end, again, because of the growth and the synergies and the improved profitability and cash flow profile for the company, it actually serves as an accelerant to our long-term BD strategy. The current focus is building out our pipeline at the moment on the BD. That's what the BD team is focused on. Even without considering the leverage profile, we believe we can and will continue to execute on early-stage clinical deals that can fill up that early-stage pipeline. And we'll always do early-stage collaborations. We announced just a couple of weeks ago a collaboration with the n-Lorem Foundation for RNU disease. Again, not very material, and that's how BioMarin over time has had a lot of success and built our profile. It's this early-stage in-licensing where then you wrap around the BioMarin development capabilities and we make it a BioMarin asset over time. We will always do those. And then as we delever and have the opportunity to look at larger deals again, the priority will still be building out the pipeline. So then it could be mid- to late clinical stage assets, but still a bit early to comment on any specifics in terms of size or timing.
All right. Sounds good. So maybe to try on a different specific. In terms of like therapeutic vertical modality, are you looking broadly, presumably rare disease is the lens, but are there any other filters you place as you look outside?
Yes. Thanks. Great question. So yes, rare disease focus. And then further within there, genetically defined conditions. Again, we think this is very important. I mentioned it as being part of the foundations of the company and our past success. So the first priority within those parameters will be areas where we can leverage our in-house capabilities. I already mentioned in-house manufacturing. We also have a robust global external manufacturing network. We can manufacture and develop in multiple modalities, large complex biologics, oligonucleotides, even small molecules. So that -- and then also just research and development, regulatory, clinical operations, commercial capability. So making sure there's a strategic fit there so that we can get the leverage from our own infrastructure. Further focus next would be within our therapeutic areas. So we've got 2 business units: metabolic conditions, which includes kind of the legacy BioMarin enzyme therapies and then Galafold and Pombiliti and Opfolda. And the second business unit is skeletal conditions, which today includes VOXZOGO for achondroplasia, on file for hypochondroplasia, BMN 333, the next-generation CNP, also in the skeletal conditions business unit. So you can think of assets that fit not just within rare and genetically defined conditions, but within those business units, lots of leverage. And we are open to expanding into other therapeutic areas as a third priority where we can still get some of that leverage from the base infrastructure that I mentioned.
Okay. I could keep asking you questions separately, but I will switch over to VOXZOGO. And again, at the quarter, you raised guidance for VOXZOGO to at least $1 billion. So what are the drivers of that raise? And I guess, what gives you confidence at this point to do that relatively early into a competitor launch?
Yes. Thanks. Great question as well. Strong first half performance is the start and confidence in the second half of the year. VOXZOGO revenues grew 14% in the first quarter, and we added 20% new patients globally for VOXZOGO. And then, again, confident in the outlook for the second half. So that really gave us the confidence to increase the revenue guidance, which is now a floor of $1 billion, BioMarin's first potential blockbuster therapy. At the beginning of the year, we highlighted a handful of variables in the 2026 guide. One was a couple of international price renegotiations that were in process at the time. This is a normal part of the process. VOXZOGO has been on the market for 5 years in most countries. And outside of the U.S., there's often a process to either renegotiate or change over from a named patient sale model to a national formulary model that involves a negotiation. One of those was resolved with a good outcome. The other one had some initial setbacks but remains in process, but nonetheless was a net positive. So that was one of the variables that was partially solved for and in the guide does include the different potential outcomes for this year. And then the other dynamic was patient switching as you mentioned, a competitor came to market earlier this year. So that remains another factor. And then just the variability of estimates at the beginning of the year and execution, and that's where I come back to how I started with that strong first half and confidence in the second half.
Okay. Got it. That sounds good. And then I guess you mentioned approved VOXZOGO, sticking with that, approved in achondroplasia, hypochondroplasia is up next. How should investors be thinking about the revenue trajectory post approval there? Is it going to be a bolus? Is it going to be a sharp inflection, more of a chug, stay chug?
Yes. Very excited. This is BioMarin's first opportunity for kind of a true label expansion into a new indication. So VOXZOGO was approved in 2021 for the treatment of achondroplasia, which is the most common form of dwarfism. Hypochondroplasia is a genetically similar condition as achondroplasia. It's the same pathway where the active ingredient in VOXZOGO, the CNP analog, which acts downstream from the FGFR gene, we believe has -- and data shows has the potential to be efficacious in hypochondroplasia as well. We were pleasantly surprised that the Phase III study that we announced earlier this year, the data exceeded our own internal expectations. There's been an investigator-sponsored study going with VOXZOGO in hypochondroplasia. Dr. Dauber, his study, he released 3-year data, which again showed sustained efficacy for VOXZOGO. So with that Phase III data in hand, we filed -- we announced last week that we filed the supplemental NDA with the FDA in record time, again, AI-enabled. We benchmarked it and we're top quartile with the best companies out there in terms of Phase III data timing to filing. Now the FDA still needs to review and accept the file. We'll share an update on our Q3 call on that, but we did want to share that the filing at least was submitted. So if accepted, that would mean a potential approval and launch next year. Achondroplasia, we estimate at 24,000 patients worldwide. Hypochondroplasia is a bit smaller. We estimated at 14,000, but still very substantial. And as you touched on, the market preparation are the key efforts right now. Of course, we can't officially market until approval, but we can prepare the market on the medical side, building condition awareness, building the case for VOXZOGO as a mechanism. we should have as a tailwind, the trust and history with VOXZOGO in achondroplasia, which was very well received. There's thousands of patients that have had years of positive experience on VOXZOGO. So that's a good starting point for hypochondroplasia. Diagnosis is going to be one of the challenges. It's -- hypochondroplasia is more difficult to diagnose than achondroplasia. And that's why, again, these medical efforts will be important. So that's the work that we're doing. I can't predict at this time a bolus or what the ramp might look like. We'll talk more about the market as we get closer. But I will say that different from other therapies where if we've had a rapid development pathway, get approved and then we're building the market as we launch, the advantage here is at least with VOXZOGO and achondroplasia, a lot of that market preparation have been done. So now it's hopefully a matter of just adding hypochondroplasia into that VOXZOGO ecosphere.
Okay. Perfect. We are out of time. I'm going to squeeze in one last question. I didn't get to ask about 133 (sic) [ 333 ] , which is the long-acting CNP or Palynziq, but I'm going to skip ahead to the FSGS program from Amicus. And can you just talk about the level of internal focus and enthusiasm there? And is there any potential to accelerate that by chance?
Yes. We're very excited about what was DMX-200 at Amicus is now BMN 820. This is a small molecule for FGFS (sic) [ FSGS ] kidney disorder. I'll share that when we originally did the Amicus transaction, when we did our valuation because that was a development asset and because there was so much value and we were focused on Galafold and Pombiliti and Opfolda, we did not assign a significant amount of value at the time of the deal to BMN 820. However, since digging in after completing the acquisition, we're very excited about it. While there is another therapy on the market for this condition, it's a relatively narrow label. So BMN 820 is a novel approach and a potentially larger patient population. BioMarin has U.S. rights only. Dimerix is the developer. But we estimate that at about 30,000 patients in the U.S. So potentially broader label, slightly different mechanism of action. The other positive development is that the FDA has agreed to proteinuria as the primary endpoint, which is a positive. So we just need to let the study run now. It is a 2-year study. It was fully enrolled recently. Just a reminder, Dimerix is the developer. So BioMarin or Amicus actually doesn't do a lot of the operational R&D, but we'll be watching it closely.
Excellent. Thank you so much. Appreciate everything.
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