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Shire CEO Says His ADHD Market Share Dropped 10 Percentage Points

By Jim Edwards

/ MoneyWatch

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Shire's grip over the ADHD market with Adderall XR and its replacement drug, Vyvanse, appears to be weakening due to generic competition, according to CEO Angus Russell. In an interview with Reuters Russell said Shire's share had slipped from 26 percent to 16 percent.

Shire signed a three-year copromotion deal with GlaxoSmithKline in hopes of propping up its ADHD franchise, which ran into generic competition from Teva in April. Here's the market share breakdown Russell gave reuters today:

  • Before April, Adderall had 26 percent of the ADHD market.
  • Now, Adderall has 10 percent
  • Vyvanse has 6 percent
  • Teva's generic Adderall has 10 percent.
How that will affect Shire's sales is an open question because for the last few months Shire has been manipulating the price of Adderall and Vyvanse to get Adderall users to switch to the newer drug. The company racked up massive revenue increases as a result. Russell also told Reuters that Shire had cut prices to compete.

Russell's spin on the share loss was that declines should be expected as kids get out of school for the summer and parents give their brats a rest from the meds. And, he noted, investors should not expect to see any benefit from the GSK deal for another two or three years. How exactly Shire will benefit during that timeframe was unexplained because, as the story also said, Impax Labs will have its own generic Adderall on the market in 2010.

BNET noted as far back as last September that Vyvanse and Adderall's gravity-defying sales would face enormous dificulty once Teva arrived with generics. Nonetheless, Shire stock which collapsed to 32.02 in March ahead of the generic onslaught has ticked up again to 41.61.

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