Biogen Q3 2026: revenue up 10.6% on Apellis drugs, but a $284M RayThera charge drove a $0.14 loss

Biogen's third quarter of 2026 (three months ended September 30, 2026) brought the first double-digit revenue growth in years, and a loss. Total revenue rose 10.6% to $2,804.1 million. The company swung to a net loss of $20.6 million, or $(0.14) per diluted share, from a $466.5 million profit ($3.17 per share) a year earlier. Nearly all of the revenue growth came from the drugs Biogen bought with Apellis in May, and nearly all of the loss came from deal accounting and a $283.8 million charge for buying RayThera, a private immunology drug developer.

Key figures

*Biogen does not report an operating income line. As in our Q2 report, operating margin here is income before tax plus "other (income) expense, net" (which holds interest, investment gains and losses and some litigation costs), divided by total revenue: $128.4 million in Q3 2026 vs $591.4 million in Q3 2025. Operating margin is the share of revenue left after running the business, before interest and tax. Cost of sales excludes amortization of acquired intangible assets, as Biogen presents it.

First nine months of 2026: revenue $8,017.9 million (+5.3% from $7,611.2 million); net income $396.4 million (-70.5% from $1,341.8 million); diluted EPS $2.66 vs $9.14; non-GAAP EPS $9.79 vs $13.30.

Takeaway: Apellis did what Biogen paid for in revenue terms: $242.8 million of sales in its first full quarter, with SYFOVRE (a geographic atrophy eye injection) up 27% on the release's like-for-like count. But it is still papering over the core. Excluding Apellis, product revenue was flat, and that flat line leaned on a SPINRAZA switch to a new high-dose regimen that management itself now says includes a one-time transition dose and will "normalize." Once that switching wave ends, the old business is back to shrinking unless SKYCLARYS, ZURZUVAE and LEQEMBI grow fast enough to cover a multiple sclerosis franchise losing about $140 million of sales a year-on-year quarter.

Revenue by franchise

Multiple sclerosis: generics keep eating TECFIDERA. MS product revenue fell $142.2 million. TECFIDERA lost half its sales ($86.2 million), "driven by a decrease in global demand, particularly in Europe, as a result of multiple TECFIDERA generic entrants" after a key European patent was revoked in November 2025. Rest-of-world TECFIDERA sales fell from $123.6 million to $50.8 million. VUMERITY fell 10.5%, which the 10-Q puts down to "a shift in patient dynamics resulting from changes in the U.S. Medicare Part D" (the release calls it "U.S. formulary dynamics", meaning insurers' lists of covered drugs). The interferons fell 15.7% as patients keep moving to pills and more effective drugs, and on "unfavorable pricing". TYSABRI grew 1.2% only because of a U.S. price increase; a biosimilar (a cheaper near-copy of a biologic drug) has been on the market since 2023. Management expects total MS revenue to keep declining.

Rare disease: SPINRAZA's switch is a one-off lift. U.S. SPINRAZA sales rose 60.8% to $246.4 million, "primarily driven by demand and stocking for the high-dose regimen as well as a favorable pricing change." Patients moving from the old 12 mg dose get one extra-large 50 mg dose before going to 28 mg maintenance doses, and the 10-Q says the quarter reflects "the higher benefit of a one-time transition dose... As the conversion cohort matures and dosing patterns normalize, we expect revenue to normalize." Rest-of-world SPINRAZA fell 3.0% on shipment timing. SKYCLARYS grew 34.1%, mainly from its launch in Europe and other international markets; the release also credits "favorable U.S. inventory dynamics", which is distributor stocking rather than patients. QALSODY rose 42.0% on international launches.

Apellis: first full quarter. SYFOVRE recorded $191.3 million and EMPAVELI $51.5 million, all in the U.S. Biogen's release compares these with Apellis's own year-ago figures: SYFOVRE +27% (injection volume +18%) and EMPAVELI +92%, with "strong demand growth in nephrology indications" (rare kidney diseases). Those comparisons come from Apellis's old 10-Q, not from Biogen's audited accounts.

Partners. The OCREVUS royalty from Roche fell 4.3% to $369.9 million, while Biogen's share of U.S. profits on RITUXAN, GAZYVA and LUNSUMIO rose to $118.3 million from $101.0 million. LEQEMBI, the Alzheimer's drug Biogen shares 50/50 with Eisai, brought in $68.4 million, up 60.2%. Eisai's global in-market sales were $202 million (+67%), $107 million of it in the U.S., up from $184 million and $97 million in Q2.

What the headline numbers hide

• The GAAP loss is mostly accounting and deal costs. Biogen's own reconciliation adds back $194.8 million of inventory step-up (Apellis and Reata inventory was revalued to near its selling price at acquisition, so as it is sold most of its profit shows up as cost; the Apellis portion was about $100.0 million and Reata's SKYCLARYS portion $97.2 million), $160.2 million of amortization of acquired drug rights, $82.1 million of restructuring and cost-saving charges, $33.3 million of losses on equity investments and $26.6 million of litigation. That takes net income from $(20.6) million to $391.4 million on its adjusted basis.
• The adjusted figure is not flattering the quarter either. Unlike many drugmakers, Biogen keeps acquired IPR&D in non-GAAP results. The $283.8 million charge is about $1.90 a share before tax, and the RayThera part is not tax-deductible. Set it aside and adjusted EPS would have been roughly $4.4–4.5, still below last year's $4.81, because Apellis brought interest costs (non-GAAP other expense was about $91 million), R&D rose 31.6% on trials of felzartamab, salanersen and litifilimab, and SG&A rose 26.4% to $752.0 million with Apellis's sales force.
• The tax rate looks absurd for a mechanical reason. Biogen booked $11.6 million of tax on a $9.0 million pretax loss (a GAAP rate of -128.5%), because the RayThera charge cannot be deducted. The non-GAAP rate was 20.0% vs 17.2%.
• Prior-year quarter had its own charge. Q3 2025 included a $104.3 million litigation matter in cost of sales, so the year-ago GAAP base was already somewhat depressed; this makes the GAAP comparison less harsh than it would otherwise be, not more.
• Some of the growth is stocking. Both SPINRAZA in the U.S. and SKYCLARYS were helped by distributor inventory building, which does not repeat. Receivables rose to $1,884.6 million from $1,342.4 million at year-end; most of that is Apellis's acquired balance, but the cash flow statement still shows $165.7 million of receivable growth from operations this year.
• Cash conversion is good. Operating cash flow was $1,735.2 million for nine months against $396.4 million of net income, helped by lower tax payments than in 2025 and by large non-cash charges. There were no buybacks (the $5.0 billion 2020 program is idle) and Biogen pays no dividend; the diluted share count rose 0.5%, so per-share figures got no help from fewer shares.

On balance the quarter is understated: reported EPS of $(0.14) sits far below the business's earning power because of $284 million of acquired R&D, $195 million of inventory step-up and $66.5 million of restructuring, while the stocking help to SPINRAZA and SKYCLARYS is small by comparison.

Did last time's read hold up?

Our Q2 report warned that the U.S. SPINRAZA gain "came partly from one-time stocking, so it may not repeat." It did repeat and got bigger (U.S. sales $246.4 million vs $204.3 million in Q2), but the filing now confirms the one-time nature and says revenue should normalize, so the caution stands, just a quarter later. We also expected step-up charges to keep GAAP margins depressed: they did, with $194.8 million of step-up added back this quarter. On debt, net debt came down from about $6.8 billion at the end of June to about $6.4 billion, per the two earnings releases.

Outlook

Guidance is in Biogen's October 28 earnings release, not the 10-Q:

• 2026 non-GAAP EPS: reported range raised at the bottom to $12.20–$13.00 (from $12.00–$13.00 in July). That includes about $3.20 of acquired IPR&D and milestone charges (was about $3.00) and about $0.55 of Apellis dilution (was about $0.85). The "underlying" range narrowed to $15.95–$16.75 from $15.85–$16.85.
• 2026 revenue: still expected to rise by a mid-single-digit percentage; nine-month growth is 5.3%.
• Costs: combined non-GAAP R&D and SG&A of about $4.95 billion for the year.
• Pipeline: Phase 3 TOPAZ-1 and TOPAZ-2 results for litifilimab in lupus (SLE) are due in the first half of December 2026; litifilimab in cutaneous lupus and felzartamab in antibody-mediated kidney transplant rejection in the first half of 2027; zorevunersen in Dravet syndrome in Q3 2027. RayThera could cost up to $775.0 million more in milestones.

Our read: the guidance change is small and mostly reflects lower Apellis dilution, not a better core business. The nine-month non-GAAP EPS of $9.79 implies a fourth quarter of roughly $2.40–$3.20 to land inside the range. Q4 is the test of two things: whether SPINRAZA's U.S. sales fall back as the transition doses end, and whether SYFOVRE keeps growing fast enough to carry the company's growth while TECFIDERA and VUMERITY keep falling. The December lupus readout is the single biggest swing factor for 2027 and beyond, since litifilimab is one of the few pipeline drugs that could add a large new market.