Why Amgen Stock Is Dropping After Swiss Rival’s Trial Setback

Amgen stock was dropping on Tuesday after Swiss drugmaker Novartis reported disappointing trial results. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Key Points

• Amgen stock dropped ahead of the opening bell on Tuesday.
• The selloff followed news that Novartis’s experimental cardiovascular treatment pelacarsen failed to meet its primary endpoint in a phase three trial.
• The trial failure by Novartis is seen as a negative indicator for Amgen’s own cardiovascular drug, olpasiran.

Big Pharma has been scrambling to restock its pipelines this year—so a disappointing trial from one drugmaker can have an outsize knock-on impact for rivals trying to develop similar treatments.

That dynamic was playing out on Tuesday, as a major setback for Switzerland’s Novartis sparked a selloff in Amgen shares.

Amgen stock dropped 5.2% to $414.43 ahead of the opening bell. Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 482 points. Amgen is one of the blue-chip index’s 30 members.

The selloff came after Novartis said on Friday that its experimental cardiovascular treatment pelacarsen had failed to meet its primary endpoint in a phase three trial.

That doesn’t bode well for Amgen’s own cardiovascular drug, olpasiran. The company is expected to readout phase three data for that treatment in mid-2028.

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1AmgenSource: FactSetAs of Sept. 4, 4 p.m. ET

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“With the Street already pricing in 65%+ probability of success,
we’re not surprised to see AMGN shares trade down after-hours,
particularly with almost two years until data,” Cantor analyst Carter Gould wrote in a research note on Friday.

Adding to the misery for the drugmaker was a downgrade. BMO Capital cut Amgen to Market Perform from Outperform with an unchanged price target of $450, according to ratings aggregators.

Still, things could always be worse.

Novartis’s Swiss-listed shares plummeted 9.1% on Tuesday after the drugmaker posted disappointing results for another clinical trial, for an experimental neuromuscular treatment. The stock closed 3.1% lower on Monday following the cardiovascular setback.

Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com

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