Was There Any Sign Gilead Stock Would Run?

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Gilead Sciences (GILD) stock rose 30.9% between August 3 and October 30, 2026, while the S&P 500 ended those three months flat. During the run, Gilead reported two quarters of faster sales growth, with double-digit gains for its HIV drugs leading the first. Anticipating this rally meant hearing about the HIV growth and seeing sales pick up before August. So when did Gilead first give investors a reason to expect faster sales?

Gilead Pointed To HIV Growth In February 2025

Management did so as early as its February 11, 2025 call, though the message was mixed. Executives said full-year HIV sales grew 8% in 2024 and that Gilead had filed for approval of lenacapavir for twice-yearly HIV prevention. On the same call, management flagged the impact of Medicare Part D reform on revenue growth. HIV growth was on the record early, and so was a Medicare change that management linked to revenue growth.

Sales Growth At Gilead Rose Through 2025

Regulatory filings then showed the pickup quarter by quarter, all of it public before the run. Revenue slipped 0.3% from a year earlier in the quarter ended March 2025, which Gilead filed on May 7, 2025. Growth then rose in each of the next three quarters, reaching 4.7% in the quarter ended December 2025. In the quarter ended March 2026, the last period filed before the run, growth eased to 4.4%.

More HIV news arrived in June 2026, though not about sales. On June 15, the FDA accepted the company’s application for a once-weekly pill form of Yeztugo, its lenacapavir drug, for HIV prevention. Over the wider stretch from February 2 to August 3, 2026, though, the shares fell 7.1%. A reader following the filings had the sales pickup in hand while the stock price went the other way.

Faster Sales At Gilead Came With A Quarterly Loss

Revenue in the quarter ended June 2026, reported on August 4, grew 10.2% from a year earlier. This compared with 1.8% in the same quarter of 2025. The June period also ended in a net loss of $10.5 billion, which news reports attributed to costs related to a series of acquisitions. Gilead returned to a profit in the quarter ended September. It still shows a net loss over the four quarters to September 2026, making its P/E not meaningful. Investors now pay 6.8 times sales for Gilead shares, against 3.2 times for the S&P 500, without a twelve-month profit behind that price.

Is Gilead’s Sales Growth Still Picking Up?

Not in the latest quarter: growth slowed from June, though it remains faster than at any point in 2025. Revenue grew 6.8% from a year earlier in the quarter ended September 2026, against 3.0% in the same quarter of 2025. In its October 29 results, management called the quarter’s growth in its base business, its own measure, the strongest in more than a decade, and executives also raised that business’s full-year revenue guidance again. On HIV, the FDA has set February 2, 2027 as its action date for the once-weekly Yeztugo pill.

Management is still pointing to growth, and the pickup shown in Gilead’s filings before the run has not reversed. Gilead’s revenue growth from a year earlier is the number to watch when the company reports on the quarter ending December 2026.

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