With double-digit Q3 growth results across the US, EU and emerging markets, AstraZeneca’s profit outlook for this financial year paints a healthy picture. The prevailing demand for cancer treatments neutralised losses from the COVID-19 vaccine and drugs.
AstraZeneca’s Q3 financial report bodes profit growth
This is the third consecutive quarter that the company came in ahead of analyst predictions. Chief executive officer (CEO) of the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical enterprise, Pascal Soriot, said:
Our company continued its strong growth trajectory in the third quarter with Total Revenue from our non-COVID-19 medicines up 13% compared to last year.
To boost its future growth prospects further, AstraZeneca announced it bought an exclusive licence for a weight-loss candidate from Eccogene, a China-based pharmaceutics outfit that focuses on metabolic and auto-immune diseases. This deal of an estimated $2bn launches AstraZeneca into the rapidly growing anti-obesity market.
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As one of the top performers among listed European pharmaceutical businesses, AstraZeneca’s third-quarter profits came in at $11.49bn, narrowly beating the market forecast of $11.47bn. A year-on-year comparison shows an increase in total revenue of 15%.
China sales made up 13% of the company’s revenue in 2022. The Q3 report shows a 1% increase in these sales. Although not much, it is the fifth consecutive China-based quarter of growth. Expressing his satisfaction with the financial performance, Soriot further commented:
I am excited about the acceleration of our cardiometabolic and obesity pipeline with today’s licensing agreement for ECC5004, a potential best-in-class, oral GLP-1RA2. This molecule could offer an important advance, as both a monotherapy and in combinations, for the estimated one billion people living with cardiometabolic diseases such as type-2 diabetes and obesity.
