CEO of the Week: Amgen’s Robert A. Bradway

CEO Robert A. Bradway on Amgen Inc.’s second-quarter results: “in the depths of the pandemic, we delivered.”

The Thousand Oaks, California-based biotech firm said that earnings in the second quarter rose 7% from a year earlier, to $4.25 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.81. Revenues rose 6% to $6.21 billion, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $6.18 billion.

“As we look back at the first six months of the year and project forward to the second half, I’m very aware that we’re still in the midst of a really significant global health challenge and deep economic downturn,” Bradway said in the company’s earnings call last week. “In that context, our results…reflect the resilience of our people, strength of our operating systems and our success in continuing to supply every patient every time with the medicines they need.”

Amgen’s management team remains “confident” in the long-term growth potential of the company’s medicines like Otezla, Repatha, Prolia, Evenity and Aimovig, as well as its expanding portfolio of marketed biosimilars, he said. Management expects readouts in the second half of the year for sotorasib for patients with advanced small cell lung cancer, tezepelumab for severe asthma and omecamtiv mecarbil for the treatment of chronic heart failure.

The company has also restarted many of the earlier stage clinical trials that it put on hold due to COVID-19 at the end of the first quarter and beginning of the second. Amgen is also exploring Otezla as a potential treatment for patients with COVID-19.

“In an environment of ongoing uncertainty, our strong financial position provides us with competitive flexibility. …our financial strength enables us to continue to invest long-term growth of our business internally and externally, while also returning capital to our shareholders,” Bradway said.

Amgen demonstrated “tight control” of expenses in the first half of the year, he said. Now, with healthcare systems operating more normally, management expects to increase expenses, including for activities that were curtailed in parts of the first and second quarters. Amgen is well positioned heading into the second half of the year, Bradway added.

“I know we’re all operating in unprecedented times here, but we feel like we’re in a strong position, operating the company well, and particularly grateful that our staff worldwide are as engaged as they are in our mission, even in this challenging time we find ourselves in,” he said.

Bradway became CEO in May 2012 and chairman in January 2013. He served as the company’s president and chief operating officer from May 2010 to May 2012, and was appointed to Amgen board in October 2011. Bradway joined the company in 2006 as vice president, operations strategy, and served as executive vice president and chief financial officer from April 2007 to May 2010.

Prior to joining Amgen, Bradway was a managing director at Morgan Stanley in London where, beginning in 2001, he had responsibility for the firm’s banking department and corporate finance activities in Europe. Bradway joined Morgan Stanley in New York as a health care industry investment banker in 1985 and moved to London in 1990

Headquarters: Thousand Oaks, California

Age: 57

Education: Bachelor’s degree, biology, Amherst College; MBA, Harvard University

First joined company: 2006

Prior to joining Amgen: managing director, Morgan Stanley

Named CEO: 2012

He’s No. 132 on Chief Executive and RHR International’s CEO1000 Tracker, a ranking of the top 1,000 public/private companies