Arena Pharma Q1 Loss Widens, Misses View

(RTTNews) - Biopharmaceutical company Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ARNA) reported Monday a loss for the first quarter that widened from last year, despite a revenue surge, reflecting higher research and development expenses. Loss per share for the quarter came in wider than analysts' expectations, and quarterly revenues also missed their estimates.

"We are off to a productive start in 2014 with significant new marketing initiatives for BELVIQ® for chronic weight management, the advancement of our lorcaserin life-cycle management programs and the development of our internally discovered pipeline," President and CEO Jack Lief said in a statement.

The San Diego, California-based company reported a net loss of $25.26 million or $0.12 per share for the first quarter, wider than $18.88 million or $0.09 per share in the prior-year quarter.

On average, 11 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report a loss of $0.10 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Total revenues for the quarter surged to $6.81 million from $2.37 million in the same quarter last year, but missed ten Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate of $7.98 million.

Revenues included $2.88 million in net product sales of obesity drug Belviq, of which $2.7 million represented 31.5 percent of Japanese drugmaker Eisai Co. Ltd.'s net product sales.

Eisai is responsible for the marketing and distribution of Belviq in the U.S. under its agreement with Arena, which manufactures and supplies the finished commercial product from its facility in Switzerland. Eisai recorded net product sales for Belviq of $8.4 million in the first quarter.

Eisai announced plans to add another 200 representatives to its sales force for Belviq by July 2014 to a total of about 600 to enable them to reach about 90,000 physicians in the U.S.

"Prescriptions for BELVIQ increased 31% in the first quarter over the previous quarter, and Eisai continues to boost its investment in key strategic areas," Lief added.

Total operating costs & expenses for the quarter increased to $30.35 million from $23.38 million last year, including research and development expenses that grew $20.99 million from $14.01 million in the year-ago quarter.

ARNA closed Monday's regular trading session at $6.84, down $0.35 or 4.87% on a volume of 9.15 million shares. The stock lost a further $0.15 or 2.19% in after-hours trading.