Amphastar spent the second quarter of fiscal 2026 doing two things at once: posting a small headline beat on the surface, and writing a $100 million check underneath. The check is a sales milestone the company triggered by pushing BAQSIMI, the nasally administered glucagon it acquired from Eli Lilly in mid-2023, past the first annual $175.0 million net-sales hurdle. That cash leaves the building in the third quarter. The beat was a top-line of $183.9 million in net revenues, up 5% year over year, and GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.67, up 4.7% on a clean comparison. Both are real, and both are smaller than they look once the four new product launches and the glucagon collapse are split out.
The product mix tells the real story of the quarter. BAQSIMI sales fell 3% to $45.5 million on a $8.1 million price concession (gross-to-net moved the wrong way on chargebacks, rebates, and customer mix), partially offset by 6.9 million dollars of unit-volume growth. Glucagon sales collapsed 42% to $11.9 million on a 7.5 million-dollar price drop and a 1.2 million-dollar volume drop, as competition and the cannibalization from BAQSIMI itself continued to grind. Other products rose 25% to $66.2 million, led by iron sucrose (+$3.5 million, launched August 2025), teriparatide (+$4.5 million, launched December 2025), albuterol, and opportunistic pull from competitor shortages. A new product line, ipratropium bromide HFA inhalation aerosol, contributed $8.4 million after its April 2026 launch, the first revenue from the inhalation platform that the company has been building for years. The big four legacy products (BAQSIMI, Primatene MIST, epinephrine, lidocaine) collectively shrank; the long tail grew.
The other shoe is a regulatory one. The company's IMS subsidiary - which manufactures a portion of the injectable portfolio - is operating under an FDA warning letter, and remediation is expected to inflate manufacturing costs and could slow production at that site. The quarter's gross margin lifted to 50.8% from 49.6%, helped by the higher-margin new launches and Primatene, but management flagged that the manufacturing cost base will expand as remediation work proceeds. Capital returns continued at a healthy clip: $44.7 million of buybacks in the quarter (2,283,375 shares retired at an average of $19.57), $74.2 million in the first half, and the share count is down 7.8% year over year to 42.5 million. The shares trade at $20.12, down 35.5% from a 52-week high of $31.26 in early September 2025, and only modestly above the 52-week low of $16.65 set in May 2026. The market is no longer paying for the BAQSIMI acquisition premium - the conversion price of $62.96 on the 2029 convertible notes is now roughly triple the stock. The question for the rest of fiscal 2026 is whether the new launches can keep the top line growing while the legacy four products finish their descent.