Rajiv Malik
President at Viatris
Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone.
Before I get into the quarter at hand, I would like to echo Michael's excitement about our upcoming investor event, but you can expect to hear from me is a comprehensive review of the significant value and the depth of our pipeline and clinical programs including biosimilars, complex genetics in our medicines that we have been strategically building over many years. These development programs are expected to play a significant role in our ability to drive organic growth over time, especially as our cost synergies roll off at the end of 2023. Once laid out in January, we believe our pipeline will be recognized as one of the company's most under-appreciated assets that will enable us to continue to deliver value, while fulfilling our mission of expanding access and addressing patient needs.
Now let's get into our results. I'm pleased to report that we have executed three strong quarters which is a testament to our diversified and differentiated commercial and operations platform, but more importantly, the dedication of our workforce. As I walk you through the performance in each of our segments and product categories, I will be making certain comparisons to combined LOE adjusted third quarter 2020 results on a constant currency basis, as well as comparisons versus our expectations as included in our guidance back in August.
Beginning on Slide 7, overall the business performed strongly across all of our segments versus our expectations. When excluding the impact of Japan's Lyrica and Celebrex LOEs, as seen on the bottom left-hand side of the slide, total net sales were down 1% as compared to combined LOE adjusted quarter three 2020 results. Our brand business performed better than our expectations primarily driven by Lipitor, Viagra, Influvac, and EpiPen. Our complex generics and biosimilar category performed in line with our expectations. We are pleased with the continued growth of our global biosimilars portfolio this quarter, which grew by 14% and helped to offset anticipated competition related to select complex generic products. Lastly, our global generics category also performed in line with our expectations, reflecting mid single digit decline compared to the prior year.
Turning to Slide 8, our developed market performance was slightly above our expectations for the quarter. Europe continues to perform very well, generating 10% year-over-year growth in net sales, driven by strong performance by brands like Influvac, Lipitor and Dymista as well as the strong performance of our thrombosis portfolio. Biosimilars in Europe grew by over 50%, led by our strong position of Hulio in Germany.
Moving to North America, we are very pleased with our overall performance. Our branded segment performed strongly driven by EpiPen, Yupelri and a better than expected performance of Perforomist. These results were partially offset by Miacalcin which experienced unanticipated competition. Complex generics and biosimilars in North America was better than our expectations with strong performance in biosimilars which help to absorb the competitive impact on Wixela and Xulane.
I would also like to make a few comments on US generics business and pricing. For the last few years, we have continued to work on our portfolio by investing in science and difficult to make dosage forms like injectables, dermatologicals, patches and drug device combinations while pruning certain commodity products at the same time. We believe we now have a very diversified generics portfolio, which is being very well supported by our strong customer service levels. This is what differentiates our ability to effectively manage this business.
Accordingly, as we normalize this quarter for exceptional one-time events like dimethyl fumarate, Wixela and Xulane, our price erosion for this quarter is mid single digit and very much in line with our expectations. We are also excited about the upcoming launch of our branded product, Semglee injection and unbranded insulin glargine injection. Both products will be available in pen and vial presentations and are interchangeable for the reference brand Lantus. This dual product approach is intended to ensure that this interchangeable biosimilar insulin can reach as many patients as possible, regardless of financial circumstances, insurance, or channel.
We are pleased with some recent formulary wins that go into effect on January 1, 2022 including the inclusion of our interchangeable biosimilar Semglee on Express Scripts' National Preferred Formulary as well as on Prime Therapeutics National Formularies. We expect that the products will be available in pharmacies before the end of the year. To ensure that as many patients as possible will benefit from these products, we will provide co-pay assistance, a patient assistance program and cash pay alternatives. In addition, beginning in '22, we will be a participant in the CMS Medicare Part D Senior Savings Model, which limit certain patients' out-of-pocket cost to no more than $1.35 for one month supply.
Moving to the next slide, our emerging market segment also performed in line with our expectations this quarter. Our branded business primarily driven by Viagra and Lipitor continues to perform strongly in these countries that have begun to recover from COVID. In this quarter, our complex generics and biosimilars category performed below our expectations due to the COVID-19 related regulatory delays, which we expect to overcome as we close-out the year. Our generics business was in line with our expectations. We had higher than anticipated sale of remdesivir and ambisome this quarter that helped offset the lower ARV volume. We expect that the demand for COVID-19 related products to taper off in quarter four.
The next slide shows our JANZ segment. We are pleased with this quarter's performance across our product categories with brands and generics performing better than expectations. Amitiza, Lyrica, and Creon drove strong brand results and our authorized generics to Lyrica and Norvasc continue to contribute growth. Biosimilars were in line with expectations, with continued strong performance from Hulio in Japan.
Greater China is our last segment slide, and the business had another strong quarter delivering results that were better than our expectations. This performance was primarily driven by retail channel growth of 20% and better than expected performance in the hospital channel. The segment benefited from some phasing of customer buying patterns this quarter that we expect to normalize in quarter four. Overall, we are very pleased with how the business is navigating the evolving policy environment. With our new launches performing to our expectations and our base business anticipated to be in line with our expectations of approximately a 4% base business erosion for the year, I feel very strong about the underlying building blocks of this business.
Now turning to the pipeline update. Regarding our BOTOX biosimilar development program, we met with FDA in early September and aligned on analytical, non-clinical data, as well as the clinical program expectations and have a clear path forward. At this juncture, we do not expect Revance 483 and a complete response letter related to their DAXI product to impact our submission timing for this program, which is scheduled to be filed by the end of 2024. We will provide an additional update when we have more information. Additionally, we recently submitted to FDA what we believe is potentially the first Eylea biosimilar.
Moving to Insulin Aspart, FDA completed a pre-approval inspection of Biocon's manufacturing facility in Malaysia. It resulted in a few minor 483 observations and Biocon has provided a complete and comprehensive response to have TS 483. We are confident that we will hear soon from the agency as this is a large remaining element needed for approval of another potentially interchangeable insulin product. Regarding Avastin, our US approval continues to be impacted by the delay of a pre-approval inspection. As previously mentioned, we have no open scientific questions with FDA.
In our complex product pipeline, we have initiated a Xulane lower dose Phase III clinical trial and are actively screening and enrolling patients. We are also happy that our levothyroxine oral solution was accepted for filing with the FDA. This quarter, we made good progress in our complex injectables portfolio. We successfully completed pivotal pharmacokinetic studies for our long-acting Octreotide Acetate injection and have demonstrated that our product is bioequivalent to Sandostatin.
Our Paliperidone Palmitate three months ANDA for 410 milligram and 273 milligram strengths have now been accepted for filing and we believe that we are the first to file for all strengths of the Paliperidone three month lipoinjection that's equivalent Invega TRINZA. We have also successfully completed our pivotal PK-study for Aripiprazole modified release injection, which is our generic equivalent for Abilify Maintena.
Before I hand it over to Sanjeev, I'll quickly address our ongoing integration and restructuring activities. We are coming up on our one-year anniversary and our initiatives are progressing as planned. We continue to remain on track to realize $500 million of cost synergies this year and are confident in our overall plans to achieve at least $1 billion of cost synergies by 2023.
Let me now turn the call over to Sanjeev. Thank you.
