Why AbbVie Stock Soared in September

Any pharmaceutical company as large and sprawling as AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) never stops being busy, from pushing investigational drugs along the development pipeline to shipping blockbuster medications to pharmacies.

As in any month, September was eventful for AbbVie. In addition to news about its usual activities, it also scored big with investors because of an important settlement it reached on a key product. Ultimately, over the course of the month, its share price rose by a sturdy 10%.

A healthy month

It's saying something that AbbVie doesn't have just one or two blockbuster drugs in its portfolio, but an entire clutch of them. And one of these was the focus of that pivotal settlement.

Image source: Getty Images.

On Sept. 11, the company filed a regulatory document with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It divulged that it had come to agreements with all generic drug manufacturers that had filed applications to make and sell generic versions of Rinvoq.

The drug, a versatile anti-inflammatory treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for several indications, is a top seller for AbbVie. In 2024 its sales topped $1.3 billion, making up 11% of total revenue for the year. So it wasn't shocking when the stock traded up on news of the settlement, the most important part of which was AbbVie's extending its Rinvoq exclusivity until April 2037.

The company was also busy in the lab, with several investigational drugs making good progress through the pipeline. One of the more advanced was pivekimab sunirine (PVEK), aimed at the treatment of a rare but aggressive blood cancer. AbbVie submitted a Biologics License Application (BLA) to the FDA for approval; as of this writing, the application is pending.

Another drug emerging from the lab and into an FDA application was tavapadon, which the company is developing as an oral medication treating Parkinson's disease. It filed a New Drug Application (NDA) for that product.

Building blocks

AbbVie already has a large portfolio of commercialized medicines and hopefully, once those FDA approval decisions are made, more on the way. To help manage this, in September the company also made decent progress on building out the facilities it'll need to manufacture these, plus research products that haven't yet reached the submission stage.

On the final day of the month, it announced it had started construction work on an expansion of an important campus in Massachusetts: the AbbVie Bioresearch Center, to which the company is devoting $70 million. This will bolster both manufacturing -- the manufacturing facilities will concentrate on the production of biologics -- and research activities, as well as office space.

Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AbbVie. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.