{"id":742272,"date":"2026-08-18T21:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T21:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742272\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T21:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T21:52:12","slug":"gilead-sciences-has-quietly-become-one-of-the-most-underrated-turnaround-stories-in-healthcare-heres-why-wall-street-is-excited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742272\/","title":{"rendered":"Gilead Sciences Has Quietly Become One of the Most Underrated Turnaround Stories in Healthcare. Here’s Why Wall Street Is Excited."},"content":{"rendered":"

Gilead Sciences (GILD<\/a> +3.25%) has shifted from a period of stagnant growth, driven by slowing hepatitis C revenues and declining sales of its COVID-19 therapy Veklury, to a turnaround led by new HIV and oncology drugs.<\/p>\n

The pharmaceutical<\/a> stock is up more than 12% so far this year and more than 5% over the past month. The driver for the bounce is the company’s best second-quarter growth in three years. That growth was led by its HIV therapies; breast cancer drug Trodelvy; and Livdelz, used to treat primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), an autoimmune disease of the liver.<\/p>\n

Here are three reasons that Gilead’s turnaround has Wall Street excited.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n

Gilead has updated its core portfolio of HIV therapies<\/p>\n

HIV treatment and HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) therapies remain Gilead’s highest-margin cash drivers. Its treatment Biktarvy continues to deliver strong baseline revenue with $3.8 billion in second-quarter sales, up 7% year over year, and it maintains more than 52% of U.S. market share. The rollout of twice-yearly injectables such as Yeztugo expands the PrEP market; long-acting formulations increase adherence and secure durable, high-margin, sticky revenue for years to come.<\/p>\n

On top of that, Gilead and partner Merck (MRK<\/a> -0.59%) are close to an approval for the first weekly pill to treat HIV. This drug is a combination of Gilead’s lenacapavir and Merck’s islatravir. The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) action date for the combination therapy is Aug. 27.<\/p>\n

In the second quarter, Gilead reported overall sales of $7.8 billion, up 10% year over year. That included HIV-related sales of $5.7 billion, up 12% year over year and 13% from the prior quarter. The key, though, was that the company’s PrEP sales exceeded $1 billion for the first time, led by $801 million in Descovy sales, up 60% from the same quarter a year ago.<\/p>\n

Its portfolio and pipeline of oncology treatments are growing<\/p>\n

Oncology now provides Gilead a second pillar of organic top-line growth.<\/p>\n

Trodelvy has established solid positioning in breast and bladder cancers and had $457 million in second-quarter sales, up 26% year over year. Gilead’s cell therapy assets, including Yescarta — and pipeline therapies such as anitocabtagene autoleucel (anito-cel) for multiple myeloma (see more below) — position the company in high-value hematology and oncology markets.<\/p>\n

Hepcludex (bulevirtide) was given accelerated approval on May 22 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a first treatment for adults with chronic hepatitis delta virus (HDV) infection who do not have cirrhosis or who have compensated cirrhosis.<\/p>\n

Anito-cel, a treatment for multiple myeloma, is expected to launch shortly after its PDUFA target date of Dec. 23. This is a BCMA-directed CAR T-cell therapy that showed a 96% overall response rate and 74% complete response rate in heavily pretreated patients.<\/p>\n

The company reported an earnings-per-share (EPS) loss of $8.45 in the second quarter, compared to positive EPS of $1.56 in the same period a year ago. The markets shrugged off the loss because most of it was attributable to research and development (R&D) expenses related to Gilead’s acquisitions of Arcellx, Tubulis, and Ouro Medicines.<\/p>\n

It spent $7.8 billion on Arcellx in April, gaining anito-cel. The $1.675 billion deal for Ouro, completed in June, brought in gamgertamig and other promising autoimmune therapies.<\/p>\n

Gilead’s $5 billion deal for Tubulis, completed in May, expanded its oncology pipeline. The move added a next-generation antibody-drug-conjugate platform, including TUB-040 for ovarian cancer and TUB-030 for various solid tumors.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 11, Gilead exercised its option to exclusively license a preclinical solid-tumor bispecific program from MacroGenics (MGNX<\/a> +0.74%). The move triggered a $10 million milestone payment to MacroGenics, boosting the two companies’ 2022 collaboration. The three-program agreement includes the clinical-stage bispecific MGD024 and two preclinical bispecific programs.<\/p>\n

Solid cash flow helps both its dividend and R&D<\/p>\n

Gilead is on track to exceed $12 billion in free cash flow this year, including $3.6 billion in the second quarter. That number should grow as short-term integration charges roll off. This cash conversion supports a reliable dividend, steady share repurchases, and continuous internal research and development (R&D) funding without straining the balance sheet.<\/p>\n

The company raised its quarterly dividend by 3.8% this year to $0.82, the 11th consecutive year it has increased its dividend. The current dividend yield<\/a> is above-average at 2.3%. And Gilead has increased its dividend by nearly 75% over the past decade. That commitment to the dividend allows investors to be patient while they wait to see which of its acquisitions pay off.<\/p>\n

Another big plus for long-term investors is that Biktarvy is unlikely to face any loss of patent protection until 2033. Descovy’s patent landscape features a combination of long underlying patent exclusivity, successful litigation defense, and strategic generic settlements. Gilead Sciences boasts a relatively long runway before facing major generic exposure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gilead Sciences (GILD +3.25%) has shifted from a period of stagnant growth, driven by slowing hepatitis C revenues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-742272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}