LONDON, March 27, 2026, 14:11 GMT
GSK shares picked up on Friday, trading at roughly 2,056 pence by 13:47 in London, a 0.54% gain, after the company announced the European Medicines Agency is set to review bepirovirsen, its investigational chronic hepatitis B therapy.
The filing is significant—GSK has highlighted bepirovirsen as one of just two major product approvals it’s counting on for 2026, a year when the company has projected revenue growth will drop to between 3% and 5%, after hitting 7% in 2025. For CEO Luke Miels, the drug is part of the slate of new therapies he needs to offset looming patent expiries in GSK’s HIV portfolio.
GSK is touting bepirovirsen as a possible first-in-class treatment for a market with few real options. According to the company, roughly 3.2 million people in Europe have chronic hepatitis B. Today’s standard antivirals usually mean staying on therapy for life, and functional cure rates—patients maintaining control of the disease after stopping meds—hover near 1%.
Bepirovirsen, an antisense oligonucleotide aimed at disrupting the genetic processes of the virus, is under review after GSK filed with the EU. The submission relies on data from the Phase III B-Well trials, where patients receiving bepirovirsen combined with standard care saw better functional cure rates compared to standard care alone. In the trial, a functional cure was defined as hepatitis B virus DNA and surface antigen remaining undetectable for at least 24 weeks post-treatment.
Back in January, results showed both late-stage trials hit their primary endpoints. At the time, Reuters noted that peak annual sales for bepirovirsen might top 2 billion pounds—a potential windfall and another chance for investors to gauge just how much GSK’s pipeline can deliver as legacy drugs age.
Shares barely budged. On Thursday, JPMorgan’s Zain Ebrahim stuck with his sell call and left the target at 2,054 pence—just about matching where the stock finished Friday. The broader analyst stance, according to MarketScreener, came in at hold, with the average price target sitting at 20.32 pounds.
GSK managed to buck the trend as European shares slipped, with the STOXX 600 dropping 0.8% by mid-morning. Losses hit most sectors, but healthcare outperformed. AstraZeneca jumped 3.4% following upbeat late-stage respiratory trial results—confirmation investors continue to value pharma pipeline breakthroughs.
Friday just brought a filing, not final approval. GSK still plans to show the full B-Well dataset at a scientific meeting and get it into a peer-reviewed journal before the year’s out. Bepirovirsen isn’t cleared anywhere yet, so any regulatory pushback or less-than-stellar data could easily rattle the stock.
