Indivior buoyed after sales of rival opioid drug halted

INDIVIOR has won another skirmish in a protracted legal battle to prevent generic versions of its top-selling medication from hitting the US market, helping its shares to recover some of their losses after warning on profits last week.

A US court on Friday granted Indivior a preliminary injunction which stops rival pharmaceutical company Dr Reddy’s from selling a generic version of its Suboxone film, an opioid addiction treatment, in the US, sending the UK company’s share price up by 16.9pc to 340.5p.

It comes just days after Indivior’s stock plummeted by nearly a third following a warning that profits and sales would be substantially lower than ex- pected after Dr Reddy’s used a window of opportunity, between its version of Suboxone being approved and a court imposing a temporary restraining order on sales, to begin selling to patients. That small sales window has had a big effect on Indivior’s market share, which shrunk by two and a half percentage points to 52pc, and is likely to wipe $25m (£19m) off full-year sales.

This new preliminary injunction will be in place until the outcome of patent litigation filed against Dr Reddy’s, which is expected in mid-2020, or if Dr Reddy’s wins an appeal, should it decide to contest the decision. Shaun Thaxter, chief executive of Indivior, said the court’s decision would not prevent patients from accessing the stock of generic Suboxone that Dr Reddy’s was able to sell before the temporary injunction was put in place.

He said: “For more than 20 years, we have worked together with stakeholders to educate on the disease of opioid addiction, advocate for access to evidence-based treatment, and progress our pipeline of innovative treatments for substance use disorders. We will continue to vigorously defend our intellectual property.”

Indivior is engaged in a number of legal battles, for which it has set aside $438m. It is being investigated by the US Department of Justice over its marketing practices and is separately involved in litigation with several rivals who want to launch generic versions of Suboxone into the US market. The skirmishes have led to extreme one-day fluctuations in the share price.