Basel pharmaceutical company – Roche with a decline in sales in the third quarter – News

• The Basel-based pharmaceutical company Roche had less sales in the first nine months of the year than in the same period last year.
• Roche’s figures remain characterized by declining Corona sales and rapidly growing new drugs.
• The Basel-based company confirms the cautious outlook for the year as a whole. Sales are likely to decline by a single-digit percentage.

As the pharmaceutical company announced, it had sales of 44.1 billion francs in the first nine months, a decrease of 6 percent compared to the previous year. At constant exchange rates, sales increased 1 percent. This means that Roche is doing slightly better than its own target. In the third quarter alone, growth was 7 percent.

Roche puts the loss in sales due to biosimilars and the declining Corona sales at a total of four billion francs for the first three quarters. Excluding Covid-19 sales, the group achieved sales growth of 9 percent at constant exchange rates.

Strong growth drivers

Of the two business areas, the larger pharmaceutical division contributed 33.6 billion francs to sales, an increase of 1 percent compared to the previous year. A third of this came from five drugs that Roche identified as the most important growth drivers. These include the relatively new eye drug Vabysmo, the MS drug Ocrevus, Hemlibra (hemophilia), Polivy (blood cancer) and Evrysdi (spinal muscular atrophy).

Meanwhile, the smaller diagnostics division continued to feel the impact of the loss of Corona sales, as shown by the 25 percent drop in sales to 10.4 billion francs.

The division’s basic business achieved good sales figures in all important markets. According to the information, the main growth drivers were immunodiagnostics, especially heart tests, as well as diagnostic solutions for clinical chemistry.

The reported sales figures for the group are slightly below analysts’ estimates due to Diagnostics. Roche traditionally does not present profit figures after nine months.

Outlook confirmed

Roche management is maintaining its cautious outlook for the 2023 financial year. At constant exchange rates, the group continues to expect a decline in sales in the low single-digit percentage range. Core earnings per title are also expected to decline in line with sales in the low single-digit percentage range. The group also continues to strive to increase the dividend in Swiss francs.

Excluding the decline in Covid-19 sales, management expects strong underlying sales growth in both divisions. The group now estimates the decrease in sales due to the loss of Corona sales to be around 4.5 billion francs – the previous forecast was around 5 billion. Biosimilars for the long-serving blockbusters Avastin, Herceptin and Mabthera are likely to cause sales losses of around 1.1 billion; Roche previously expected a loss of 1.6 billion. Roche management estimates the negative currency impact for the year as a whole to be 7 percent.