Biopharmaceutical business Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX: TLX) has delivered a surge in revenue during the fourth quarter of the 2024 fiscal year (ending December) as sales in its cancer diagnostic imaging agent known as Illuccix continued to build up steam.
Revenue jumps as Illuccix sales accelerate
Unaudited revenue for the quarter clocked in at US$142 million, equating to a healthy 46 per cent jump from US$97 million at the same time last year. This positive outcome also represents a 5 per cent uptick from US$135 million in revenue during the previous quarter.
In turn, the company generated nearly US$520 million in revenue for the full 2024 financial year (FY24), marking a 55 per cent jump from twelve months ago. The result for this metric also exceeded management’s previous guidance for FY24 which projected revenue to range between US$490 million and US$510 million.
Telix Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer, Dr Christian Behrenbruch, commented:
“This has been another great quarter of commercial performance. Strong sales of Illuccix have led Telix to close out the year with revenue above guidance, while significantly progressing our strategic priorities…
We are well positioned for significant expansion, including planned launches of multiple imaging products in key markets and advancing late-stage therapeutic assets into pivotal trials. 2025 is shaping up to be transformative year for Telix.”
Commercialisation roadmap
Broadly speaking, Telix is developing a portfolio of clinical and commercial-stage products for the diagnosis of prostate, kidney, brain, and musculo-skeletal diseases that seek to address significant unmet medical needs in the fields of oncology and rare diseases.
The company currently generates the vast majority of its revenue from the sale of Illuccix, which is used in positron emission tomography (PET) scans to help healthcare professionals detect prostate cancer in patients.
Illuccix is the group’s only product which has so far been approved for commercial use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), and Health Canada.
In Australia, the company first initiated sales of Illuccix in early 2022 with the diagnostic agent hitting shelves in the lucrative US market in April of the same year.
Foundations for growth
Telix seeks to move numerous other products towards commercialisation in 2025 and beyond.
Amongst others, the company recently moved a step closer to bringing to market its brain tumour imaging product Pixclara after receiving ‘New Drug Application’ (NDA) status from the FDA. Here, the group’s formal application was granted priority review by the FDA, with the commercial launch of Pixclara in America on track for the current year.
Pixclara is an investigational imaging agent designed to enhance the diagnosis of aggressive brain tumours known as gliomas. It is utilised in PET scans to help identify the disease in the brain.
According to the company, there is no FDA-approved targeted amino acid PET agent for brain cancer imaging commercially available in the US. As such, the FDA designated Pixclara as an ‘orphan drug’ to fast-track its development, with an approval target date for the product set for April 2025.
Unmet medical needs
Gliomas represent the most common primary brain tumours of the central nervous system (CNS), accounting for about 30 per cent of all brain and CNS tumours and 80 per cent of all malignant brain tumours.
In particular, GBM is a high-grade glioma and the most common and aggressive form of primary brain cancer with about 22,000 new cases diagnosed in America each year.
Current treatment for GBM involve surgery which is then followed by combined radiotherapy and chemotherapy. However, recurrence of GBM occurs in almost all patients with an expected survival duration of between 12 and 15 months from first diagnosis.
Existing scanning methods for gliomas and GBM involve magnetic resonance imaging techniques which the company believes can lead to inconclusive results that delay treatment decisions when time is of the essence.