Why Should AbbVie Stock Holders Watch This One Number?
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AbbVie (ABBV) now draws nearly half of its sales from two drugs. Out of $17.4 billion in total revenue during the third quarter of 2026, the company sold $8.48 billion of Skyrizi and Rinvoq, its two biggest immunology treatments. For a holder, this concentration makes AbbVie stock largely a bet on those two products. So why is AbbVie relying on those two drugs more than it did a year ago?
Skyrizi And Rinvoq Grow Twice As Fast As AbbVie
AbbVie relies more heavily on these two drugs because they are growing more than twice as fast as the company as a whole. Skyrizi sales reached nearly $5.8 billion in the third quarter, rising 22.9% on an operational basis that excludes currency moves. Rinvoq sales climbed 24.3% on the same basis, while AbbVie’s total revenue grew 10.5%, also excluding currency.
Management gave its reasons during the October 30 call, saying that both drugs continue to beat its expectations and that Skyrizi still wins roughly 1 out of every 2 new or switching psoriasis patients. Humira, another AbbVie immunology drug, is moving the other way. Its sales fell 30.6% to $683 million, a decline management put down to continued biosimilar competition, meaning cheaper copies of the drug. With the two drugs outpacing AbbVie overall while Humira shrinks, Skyrizi and Rinvoq now account for a larger share of AbbVie’s sales than they did a year ago.
What Could Slow AbbVie’s Two Biggest Drugs?
Other AbbVie drugs illustrate what can cut into a major product’s sales. Humira is not the only treatment losing sales. Imbruvica, a cancer drug, saw its sales fall 26.1% in the third quarter. Management put this drop down to competitive pressure on its market share and to IRA pricing, which was set under a U.S. drug price law. Management also said the IRA price for Vraylar, its psychiatry drug, begins in 2027.
Skyrizi and Rinvoq face rivals as well. Management said on the call that the two drugs have been on the market for 8 years and now encounter more competition, including recent oral competition for Skyrizi in psoriasis. Management also said this oral competition is not having a substantive impact on Skyrizi’s share of new patients.
Evidence pointing the other way centers on new uses. On October 23, 2026, the FDA approved an under-the-skin starting dose of Skyrizi for Crohn’s disease, an addition management expects will lift Skyrizi’s share of new Crohn’s patients over the next several quarters. Management also expects U.S. approvals of Rinvoq for vitiligo and alopecia areata over the next several months, estimating that these two uses will generate nearly $2 billion of peak sales together. AbbVie has raised its Skyrizi sales guidance for 2026 three times.
How Much Risk Is In AbbVie Stock Today?
AbbVie stock trades at 7.7 times sales, compared with 3.3 for the S&P 500. The shares returned 37.5% in the year to November 5, 2026, against 9.9% for the index. The price likely assumes that Skyrizi and Rinvoq will keep growing well ahead of the rest of the company.
The stock has not always held up better than the market when trouble arrived. During the 2023 regional banking crisis, AbbVie fell 13.0% while the S&P 500 fell 6.7%. In the 2022 inflation shock, the stock fell only 1.5% while the index fell 24.0%.
Each shock picks different winners, which is why building for a crash and a rally beats guessing.
A holder should take this reliance seriously, but not as an alarm: for now, Skyrizi and Rinvoq are among AbbVie’s fastest-growing drugs, not its weak spots. For the risk to be worth taking, both drugs need to keep winning new patients as competition grows, enough to make up for Humira’s falling sales. AbbVie is expected to report its fourth quarter in February 2027, and plans to give its 2027 guidance on that call. The share of AbbVie’s sales coming from Skyrizi and Rinvoq, nearly half in the third quarter, is the number to watch in that report.
Beyond ABBV: A Systematic Way To Invest
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