“New pharmaceutical products such as Tivicay and Triumeq now more than offset the sales decline in Advair”.
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Chief executive officer of pharmaceutical conglomerate GlaxoSmithkline Andrew Witty maintained the company’s business in China is stabilizing even as he admitted that the country’s drug market had slowed dramatically over the last year, The Guardian reported. The Company operates in three primary areas of business: Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines and Consumer Healthcare.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has delivered second quarter Group sales of £5.9bn and said it was on track to achieve guidance for 2015.
However, the waning popularity of its blockbuster drug, Advair, hit respiratory pharmaceutical sales, which fell 6 percent. The company completed a deal in March with Novartis AG to add vaccines and create a consumer health joint venture for items such as upset- stomach tablets. Its sales in China declined sharply by 14 per cent. Its HIV sales increased sharply by 59 per cent to £559 million.
Meanwhile, the Vaccines segment benefited from the continued uptake of newly acquired meningitis vaccines, Bexsero and Menveo, from Novartis. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have given a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the stock.
Sir Andrew remains under pressure at the firm as this caps off a now systemic fall in sales for the past 18 months, and also comes off the back of a series of bribery allegations across emerging markets and a major $3bn fine for historic marketing abuses, all of which have damaged the company’s reputation.
The company still expects to see core earnings growth in the double digits in 2016.
Glaxo announced in a statement today that its core operating profit had slipped four percent to £1.35 billion in the second quarter, producing earnings per share of 17.3p.
The company, which promised in May to pay a steady dividend for three years, said it would pay out 19p for the quarter. GSK’s Built Products Portfolio contains over 50 off-patent products, too as its branded generics company as well as other local products. And during the quarter, we received a positive FDA AdCom recommendation for Nucala, our IL-5 monoclonal antibody for severe asthma, which is also being filed for approval in Japan.
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The company said it would look “very thoroughly” into the claims, which cover a period before its pledge in December 2013 to stop paying doctors to speak on its behalf or to attend global conferences.
