Biotech Gilead Sciences handily beat first-quarter expectations and raised its revenue guidance Thursday, capping off a busy day for big-cap drugmaker earnings. Gilead (GILD) reported earnings minus one-time items of $2.94 a share, up 99% from the year-earlier quarter and beating analysts' consensus by 62 cents, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue jumped 52% to $7.59 billion, more than $600 million above Wall Street's estimate.

Gilead doesn't give EPS guidance, but it added $2 billion to its full-year product-sales target, now $28 billion to $29 billion. That's up 14% to 18% from 2014.

Essentially the entire revenue beat came from the hepatitis C drug Harvoni. In its first full quarter on the market, Harvoni notched $3.5 billion, well above analysts' $2.2 billion estimate. Its predecessor Sovaldi, however, missed expectations at $972 million. Gilead's HIV franchise, once the mainstay but now a minority of revenue, also came in below forecasts.

Evercore ISI analyst Mark Schoenebaum said the guidance raise is especially significant.

"This company tends to be conservative, so for them to raise revenue guidance this early in the year speaks volumes," he wrote in an email to clients.

On the conference call with analysts, commercial-operations chief Paul Carter said that the U.S. HCV patient base seemed to be "somewhere north" of the 250,000 that Gilead had predicted last year. He added that Q1 was the first in which the franchise has picked up significant numbers of patients in Europe, which reached about 20,000.

Bernstein analyst Geoffrey Porges, who last week said that Gilead ought to buy fellow big-cap biotech Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), delicately brought up what it might be doing with all its cash.

CFO Robin Washington said that Gilead does keep an eye out for M&A opportunities, but said it prefers "phase-two or earlier-stage assets." That would seem to cut against Vertex, which already has commercial products.

Gilead's stock rose about 2% in after-hours trading. Shares had closed down 1.8% at 100.51.

AbbVie (ABBV), which has a rival hepatitis C treatment, Viekira Pak, was steady late. It beat EPS estimates last week.

Earlier Thursday, Israeli generic-drug giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA) reported adjusted EPS of $1.36, up 11.5% and beating views by 11 cents.

Sales dipped to $4.98 billion but beat estimates by $150 million. Excluding currency headwinds and divestments, sales rose 8%.

Teva raised its EPS guidance for the year by 5 cents to $5.05 to $5.35, implying the profit upside is not going to be sustained. The biggest threat on the horizon is the U.S. launch of generic versions of its best-seller Copaxone, whose date is uncertain but likely to take place by September.

Teva's stock slid 2.7% to 60.42.

Celgene Sales Miss Celgene (CELG) reported a mixed quarter. EPS rose 27% to $1.07, a penny above views. Sales grew 20% to $2.08 billion, missing consensus by more than $30 million.

The big biotech affirmed full-year guidance for $9 billion to $9.5 billion in product sales and EPS of $4.60-$4.75. Last year it made $3.71 a share on $7.67 billion in revenue.

U.S. sales of flagship blood-cancer drug Revlimid beat esti mates, but foreign Revlimid sales and all other individually reported drug sales missed consensus.

Celgene stock dived 4.5% to close at 108.06.

Danish diabetes specialist Novo Nordisk (NVO) reported earnings of 3.79 kroner (50 cents) per share, up 56% and beating consensus of 3.31. Revenue rose 24% to 25.2 billion kroner ($3.3 billion), about 80 million kroner ($10.5 million) above consensus.

Novo Nordisk hiked its 2015 profit growth guidance to 17% from 10% and added a percentage point to the low end of its sales growth guidance, to 7%-9%.

President Kaare Schultz said he is leaving Novo, following a management reorganization that eliminated his other job, chief operating officer. Schultz had aspired to be CEO, but the board decided to keep on Lars Sorensen.

Novo's stock rose 1.2% to 56.27.