The number of options and shares are in part attributable to Martin’s long tenure at the company, most of it as CEO, said Cara Miller, a spokeswoman for Gilead, in an e-mail. The cost of a 12-week regimen of Sovaldi along with interferon and another drug “is consistent with and in many cases actually less” than older treatments that require longer duration of therapy, she said.

Gilead shares declined less than one percent to $82.07 at 11:15 a.m. in New York.

The billionaire, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Golden Gate University, has spent most of his career working on antiviral drugs, and has been an active dealmaker, willing to pay a premium for companies with drugs that show promise.

After one of its hepatitis C compounds had setbacks in early testing, Gilead acquired Sovaldi by buying Pharmasset Inc. for almost $11 billion in 2012, at a price that represented an 89 percent premium to Pharmasset’s price before the deal was announced in November 2011. Gilead stock has more than quadrupled since then.

‘Brilliant Transaction’

“It was a brilliant transaction,” said Geoffrey Porges, an analyst at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “In antivirals, Gilead has proven itself over and over again to be ahead of the curve.”

At least half of Gilead’s $127 billion market value is attributable to expectations for its hepatitis C drugs, according to Porges. He said the company’s hepatitis C drugs could generate $16 billion in sales in 2016.

Sovaldi has attracted scrutiny over its high price. Pharmacy benefit managers such as Express Scripts Holding Co. and Catamaran Corp. are discussing how to pit similar drugs against each other by refusing to pay extra for a drug that is more convenient to take than another, or by subjecting hepatitis C drugs to more outside review, Bloomberg News reported in January.

‘Poster Child’

Sovaldi “is the poster child for everything that is wrong with drug prices,” Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview. Sovaldi’s price will mean that some people won’t get access to the treatment, he said. He has submitted a shareholder resolution to tie executive compensation at Gilead to the affordability of its medicines.