Pacira BioSciences is using a mid-year device sale to finish a long pivot from a three-product pain franchise into a cash-funded gene-therapy company. The June quarter still grew, but the print is less about the top line and more about what management chose to keep. Selling the handheld cryotherapy tool to Zimmer Biomet strips out the fastest-growing commercial SKU so the remaining cash engine can underwrite a locally injected osteoarthritis gene program. That is the investment debate: whether a mid-single-digit EXPAREL franchise plus a mid-stage gene readout is worth more as a focused biopharma than as a hybrid device-and-drug story.
The commercial engine still funds the story. Second-quarter revenue reached $192 million, up six percent from the year-ago period. EXPAREL net sales rose three percent even as volume grew four percent, because group-purchasing discounts and a shift toward smaller vials clipped the realized price. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization slipped to $49 million from $54 million a year earlier. Cash and investments sat at $251 million before the Zimmer closing cash arrived. The cash generation is real; the operating leverage is not yet.
UnitedHealthcare now pays for EXPAREL outside the surgical bundle for about 40 million additional members, which management frames as a coverage tipping point. Full-year EXPAREL sales guidance starts at $600 million. The top of that range is $620 million and was left unchanged after the device sale. The next test is whether outpatient reimbursement and a year-end readout on the osteoarthritis gene program can re-rate a stock that still trades like a no-growth specialty drug. Does the market pay a pipeline multiple before Part A data, or only after?