AstraZeneca hikes profit forecast as early swine flu sales boost revenues
ASTRAZENECA, the UK’s second biggest drug company, yesterday increased its full-year outlook for the second quarter in a row yesterday as profits jumped 24 per cent, beating forecasts.
The group reported pre-tax profits of $3.03bn (£1.83bn) for its third quarter as revenues rose by five per cent to $8.2bn, helped by earlier-than-expected sales from its swine flu vaccine.
But the one-off nature of the gain from flu and other factors diluted the strong results, and investors fretted over prospects for new blood thinner Brilinta, pushing shares in the drugmaker lower.
AstraZeneca has been helped this year by the resilience of the pharmaceutical sales and delays in cheap generic versions of heart drug Toprol XL and cancer treatment Casodex — though both have now been launched in the United States. The sale of H1N1 swine flu vaccine to the US government by the group’s MedImmune unit has been an added bonus, contributing $152m to sales in the third quarter — a lot more than the nominal $25 that analysts had forecast.
Finance chief Simon Lowth said: “The business has performed more strongly on the top line than we had anticipated and we haven’t experienced quite the extent of the headwind that we had anticipated.”