In a crowded psoriasis field, who could nab Celgene’s Otezla-and at what price?

Antitrust regulators recently surprised industry watchers with the stipulation that Bristol-Myers Squibb sell Celgene's Otezla to win U.S. clearance for its $74 billion merger. But since then, as there’s no way around it, analysts have pulled out their calculators trying to put a dollar figure on the drug. Otezla could get Bristol about $5.4 billion, Bernstein analyst Ronny Gal said in a Monday note to clients. But his peers at Credit Suisse, Jefferies, RBC Capital and Wolfe Pharma are modeling around $8 billion to $10 billion. As Gal put it: “This is primarily a question of IP. Most of the patents around Otezla expire in September 2023, Gal noted. There is one patent covering its use in psoriatic arthritis that expires in 2034, which Gal said could be bypassed because it’s a small carveout covered by what’s known as a section VIII statement under Hatch-Waxman, where a generic drugmaker can seek approval by carving out a protected indication.