Celgene CEO Explains The Reasons Behind Company's Ambitious Guidance

Celgene Corporation CELG witnessed a strong rally on Monday following the declaration of its preliminary 2014 results and the financial outlook for 2015 and beyond.

The stock closed at $117, up more than $4.

Robert Hugin, Celgene chairman and CEO, was on CNBC Monday to discuss the company’s drug pipeline and its ambitious guidance.

"Well, the first thing is we think about what's best internally," Hugin said. "We want to be a great company and to be a great company you have to have a great mission and we are lucky we have a great mission, making meaningful difference in people’s lives who are under-served today, but importantly great companies create the future."

He continued, "Internally, we wanted to set those aspirational, but achievable goals…and that's why we set very ambitious: over $20 billion in revenues in 2020 and more than $12.50 in EPS. So, internally important, I think gives confidence to investors that we believe in our future."

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What Are Going To Be The Biggest Drivers Of Growth?

"Well, obviously hematology is very important as we pointed out," Hugin replied. "Existing products will give us about 15 percent of the 18 percent compounded annual growth rate we expect to have, target through 2020, but exciting things happening beyond the hematology.

"Abraxane had an 11 percent quarter-over-quarter sequential growth, the prescriptions in Otezla rose from 11,319 in the third quarter to 27,532 in the fourth quarter. So, we are getting traction areas outside of the core businesses. It really strengthens our portfolio. So we are very excited about being in hematology[…] but we are building a broad-based company here," Hugin said.