SAN FRANCISCO – With a global market still wobbly after last week's rough start, Celgene Corp. chief Bob Hugin sought to deliver a reassuring picture for investors long on Celgene while also announcing that he'd hand the reigns to a new CEO, current President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Alles, on March 1. Jackie Fouse will be promoted to president and chief operating officer.

Despite the company's 2016 forecast, mostly meeting analyst expectations, investors appeared unsettled to learn that the Summit, N.J.-based company's fourth quarter financials fell 9 cents short of consensus estimates, mostly due to one-time items, including a 7 cents per share impact from a $70 million milestone achieved by Oncomed Pharmaceuticals Inc. during the quarter and cost from the company's acquisition of Receptos Inc. The report left shares (NASDAQ:CELG) falling 5.5 percent on Monday to close at $103.03. (See BioWorld Today, July 16, 2015.)

J.P. Morgan analyst Cory Kasimov said that "while 4Q15 EPS and the 2016 guide was a little light, we don't believe today's update in any way justifies the magnitude of the selloff." He called the weakness in shares "a compelling opportunity."

Ceglene's fourth quarter net product sales of about $2.54 billion continued to be led by Revlimid, which generated about $1.56 billion, according to a preliminary report, while full year sales are expected to be about $9.16 billion, up 21 percent year-over-year. In 2016,the company maintained its projection for net product sales about $10.5 billion to $11 billion, a 17 percent increase year-over-year.

Driving the growth to come, Hugin said is an increasing number of phase III studies as well as work in its collaboration with Astrazenca plc's biologics arm Medimmune, progress in the future of T-cell therapies with Juno Therapeutics Inc. and progress being made on inflammatory bowel disease via ozanimod and GED-0301 – part of a landscape for more than 100 sponsored trials with more than 18,000 patients enrolled globally. Investments in late-stage programs have the potential to add more than $3 billion of additional revenues to Celgene's financial picture over the next four to five years, Hugin said. A broad expansion of the company's franchise footprint to come could see it filing as many on average of eight to 10 investigational new drug applicaton filings per year through 2020, he said, and as many as 50 potential product approvals through 2025. (See BioWorld Today, April 27, 2015, and June 30, 2015.)