Pascal Soriot, chief executive, explained that he was pleased with the company’s progress as it approached a pivotal year in 2016, when it will lose the exclusivity of its statin drug, Crestor, in the US.
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Product sales for the first nine months of the year fell to USD17.43 billion, compared to a USD19.4 million a year earlier, primarily due to a sharp sales decline for its Nexium acid reflux treatment in the U.S., where it has been suffered from the introduction of generic competitors since February.
Core pre-tax profit for the third quarter declined to $1.621 billion from $1.654 billion a year ago.
Shares of AstraZeneca increased by as much as 2.33% to $32.90 per share in premarket trading this morning. The London-based company is betting big heading into year-end having successfully withstood competition from generics in the recent quarter. Analysts had forecast quarterly sales of $5.97 billion and earnings of $1.03 cents a share. This was aided by sales of Brilinta, which jumped 73%, and a 12% uplift in emerging market drug revenues over the period.
Mr Soriot admitted there was still more work to do on the submission of the saxagliptin and dapagliflozin combination. Nexium sales have taken a battering since the first quarter, when the first cheap copycat entered the market. The drug’s sales fell 30% year-over-year (YoY) in the third quarter of fiscal 2015 (3QFY15) and only 24% after excluding the negative impact of currency changes.
Analysts at Liberum Capital said the better revenue and profit guidance probably reflected a lower-than-expected decline in Nexium sales.
These declines were offset to a few extent by growth triggered by the company’s new drugs. In Europe, sales of the drug declined by 13% to US$825mln with a modest volume decline and a significant price decline reflecting increased competition from recently-launched analogue medicines.
For the third quarter, the company reported a surge in pre-tax profit to $931 million from $322 million in the previous year. Still, analysts said Astra had performed better than its peers in China thanks to growth of the diabetes business.
Christian Glennie, analyst at Edison Investment Research, said: ‘The results are encouraging ahead of Crestor’s patent expiry next year and we would highlight the resurgence of Brilinta and strong commercial performance and clinical development of AstraZeneca’s collaborative franchises as continuing grounds for optimism.
But, at constant exchange rates, revenue in the year to date was steady and EPS up 2 per cent, helped by tight control on costs and income from disposals of certain products.
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Write to Denise. Roland at Denise.
