Today, Bayer’s results are finally out, so a couple of observations about Nubeqa:
The first observation is that Orion’s reported Nubeqa royalties for Q4 were surprisingly high relative to Bayer’s corresponding Q4 sales, which is both positive (good royalty %) and negative news (no huge sales) 
- Q3 2024:
- Bayer Nubeqa sales: €417m
- Orion adjusted royalty: €89m
- → Adjusted royalty-%: 21.3%
- Q4 2024:
- Bayer Nubeqa sales: €443m
- Orion adjusted royalty: €141m
- → Adjusted royalty-%: 31.8%
(In the calculation, I note that royalties are adjusted by subtracting the previous quarter’s product sales from the current quarter’s total royalty (product sales + so-called pure royalty)
This would suggest that some tiered royalty-% has been strongly activated during Q4. For the full year, Orion’s royalty-% remained between 23–24%, which I consider high compared to previous guidance for Nubeqa royalties:
“Initially royalties are approximately 20%… if annual sales EUR 3 billion, Orion’s average royalty is slightly above 25%.”
So, even €1.5bn in Nubeqa sales is enough to reach close to a 25% royalty level, nice!
The second observation relates to Bayer’s joint 2025 guidance for Nubeqa and Kerendia (there doesn’t seem to be separate Nubeqa guidance 
so we’ll go with this) €2.5bn+ seems very cautious, especially since Bayer mentions not taking potential Trump tariffs into account in the guidance.
- In 2024, Nubeqa + Kerendia sales were already practically €2bn, and y/y growth was 75%.
- To reach the guidance, a mere ~26% growth would suffice! Even though both drugs are still patent-protected and there is no information about significant new competitors.
- For example, even if growth dropped from 75% to 50%, sales would be €3bn.
This suggests that Bayer might be intentionally conservative, but of course, the upper range is missing. (Similar caution was also observed in Orion’s guidance.)