Skip to content

Subscriber Only

Gilead Won’t Run Out of Hep C Patients, or Dollars, Anytime Soon

A long-suffering Hepatitis C patient who is taking Sovaldi. — A long-suffering Hepatitis C patient who is taking Sovaldi.
Photographer: Bob Ecker/MCT via Getty Images

By

July 30, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

A single pill of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s hepatitis C treatment costs more than an iPhone, and is selling better, too.

In the drug’s first full year on the market in 2014, Sovaldi — which costs $1,000 a pill — brought in $10.3 billion. That’s more than the Apple Inc. phone generated in 2008, its first full year. Gilead’s follow-up drug, Harvoni, is on pace to do even better, with second-quarter sales of $3.61 billion.