AXSM
Revenue’s doing the heavy lifting
Axsome Therapeutics just handed in a quarter that looks pretty good on the surface and a little annoying if you were hoping for cleaner profits. Revenue jumped 57% year over year to $191.2 million, thanks mostly to Auvelity, which racked up $153.2 million in sales and kept behaving like the star of the show.
The profit line spoiled the party
But here’s the part the market couldn’t ignore: the company posted a net loss of $64.5 million, or $1.26 per share, wider than last year and well below the $0.90-per-share loss analysts were expecting. In other words, the company sold more stuff, but it also spent like a biotech trying to turn on every light in the house.
- Auvelity prescriptions rose about 35% to roughly 223,000
- Sunosi revenue climbed 34% to $33.9 million
- Symbravo contributed $4.1 million in its early launch phase
- SG&A costs jumped to $185 million as commercialization ramped up
- R&D also increased to $52.7 million
Why investors care
The bullish case is still intact: Auvelity is growing fast, Axsome just got FDA approval for an agitation indication tied to Alzheimer’s disease, and a June launch could add another growth lane. The worry, of course, is that all this momentum is expensive to buy, and the market tends to get grumpy when losses don’t behave.
Axsome said it has $305.1 million in cash and enough runway to reach cash-flow positivity, which is the kind of sentence investors love hearing almost as much as they love actual profits. Big picture: this is still a growth story, but one with a very biotech-flavored “show me the margin” problem.