What's in Store for BioDelivery (BDSI) This Earnings Season?

BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. BDSI is scheduled to report first-quarter 2019 results on May 6 after market close.

Shares of the company have increased 27.5% so far this year compared with the industry’s rise of 4%.

BioDelivery’s earnings performance has been encouraging over the trailing four quarters. While the company surpassed expectations in three of the last four quarters, it matched the same once, delivering an average positive surprise of 16.53%.

In the last reported quarter, the company’s earnings were in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Let’s see how things are shaping up prior to this announcement.

Factors at Play

Belbuca (chronic pain) and Bunavail (opioid-dependence) constitute BioDelivery’s marketed portfolio. The company is also reviewing strategic option to re-launch Onsolis.

We expect Belbuca to maintain its sales growth momentum and the drug to drive BioDelivery’s total sales in the first quarter. The company witnessed consistent increase in new patients as well as in total prescription of this drug in every quarter of 2018.

The company significantly improved managed care coverage for the drug and also expanded its sales force to support the growth. In February, the company secured preferred coverage by Cigna Healthcare, a leading U.S. pharmacy benefit manager. With this new coverage, Belbuca’s preferred access expands to more than 115 million patients. This increased coverage is expected to boost Belbuca’s sales in the first quarter. We remind investors that the company re-acquired worldwide rights to Belbuca in early 2017 from Endo International Plc ENDP.

Bunavail sales declined in the past couple of quarters and we expect this negative trend to be reflected in the soon-to-be reported quarter’s results as well.

Research and development expenses have been declining over the past three years and the decline is expected to continue in the soon-to-be reported quarter. Meanwhile, the expansion of sales force for Belbuca is likely to increase selling, general and administrative expenses.

Investor focus will be on initiatives to boost the prospects of Bunavail and re-launch of Onsolis on the first-quarter earnings call.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that BioDelivery is likely to beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to be able to beat estimates. But that is not the case here, as you will see below.

Earnings ESP: BioDelivery’s Earnings ESP is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at earnings of 10 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: BioDelivery’s Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP to be confident about an earnings surprise.

Note that we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell) going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. Price and Consensus