RHHBY Roche Holdings Ltd AG (QX)

By Jonathan D. Rockoff and Joseph Walker 

Gilead Sciences Inc. is planning to hire industry veteran Daniel O'Day to take the helm and help the drug company revive sales and recover from a disappointing deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. O'Day, whose hiring could be announced as soon as Monday, would become Gilead CEO after a long career at Switzerland's Roche Holding AG, most recently running its pharmaceuticals group, the people said. In the role, Mr. O'Day oversaw successful launches of several new cancer and other drugs, and turned the business into a top industry performer.

It is the kind of experience that Gilead has been seeking since CEO John Milligan unexpectedly said in July he will leave by year's end.

The Foster City, Calif., company is at a pivotal juncture as it looks to jumpstart revenue growth and its stock price amid declining sales of its lucrative hepatitis C drugs, including Sovaldi and Harvoni. Those drugs helped Gilead's sales to nearly triple from $11.2 billion in 2013 to $32.6 billion in 2015. But sales have fallen quickly since then because of competitive pricing pressures and declining patient demand, and the company's total revenue this year is projected to be $21.7 billion, according to S&P Capital IQ.

Mr. O'Day will be tasked with using Gilead's roughly $28 billion in cash and short-term investments to hunt for new acquisitions and research and development deals.

But among Mr. O'Day's first orders of business will be making good on the company's recent foray into a new kind of cancer treatment. The treatment, known as CAR-T, takes a patient's own immune cells, weaponizes them to fight cancer and then returns them to the patient to attack the disease.

Gilead paid about $11 billion last year to buy one of the CAR-T technology's pioneering companies and its lead drug Yescarta. The move was aimed to help fill the hole left by Gilead's sputtering hepatitis C franchise. But Yescarta sales have been meagre so far, just $183 million for the first nine months of this year.

Write to Jonathan D. Rockoff at Jonathan.Rockoff@wsj.com and Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 09, 2018 20:30 ET (01:30 GMT)

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