AbbVie Inc. executives lowered their outlook for the quarter and year in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday, which cited research and development expenses and milestone payments to partners.
AbbVie ABBV said it must pay out $243 million in milestone payments to partners for acquired in-process research and development, or IPR&D, in the fourth quarter, bringing the grand total for the year to $697 million. Accounting for IPR&D and milestone payments was recently required by the SEC for drugmakers because the regulatory agency considers creating performance measures that exclude normal expenses to be misleading.
On Thursday, CytomX Therapeutics Inc. CTMX said it was seeing “encouraging clinical activity” in its trials with AbbVie for a cancer treatment candidate. A request for comment on whether CytomX was receiving any of those milestone payment was not returned by time of publication.