AstraZeneca moves to grow with new drugs as COVID sales slump | – #AstraZeneca #moves #grow #drugs #COVID #sales #slump

LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca ( AZN.L ) said on Thursday it is poised for growth in 2023 and beyond, relying on a pipeline of cancer, metabolic and rare disease drugs it is developing to boost its waning COVID. product sales.

Its shares rose as much as 5% on London’s blue-chip FTSE 100 (.FTSE) was the second best performer and had its best day of the year.

CEO Pascal Soriot, the company in this decade at least 15 new medicine said it is on track to submit and expects to start at least thirty new late-stage clinical trials in 2023.

The company also medicine It forecast a return to growth in China, one of its key markets, after reporting a second straight quarter of growth despite prices coming under pressure.

“We are well on our way to 2023 to meet our industry-leading growth ambitions for 2025, but also to 2030,” Soriot said in a press briefing.

Soriot, who took over in 2012 after suffering a series of patent losses and a series of clinical trial failures, the Anglo-Swedish medicine reversed the fate of its manufacturer.

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But like many other industries and its peers, AstraZeneca is struggling with higher costs related to the war in Ukraine and the lingering effects of the pandemic in 2022.

With AstraZeneca’s extensive pipeline and extensive portfolio of existing drugs – leading to ever-increasing R&D and sales costs – analysts and investors are particularly focused on the company’s profit margins.

CFO Aradhana Sarin said operating profit margins have increased from around 27% in 2021 to 30% last year, and the plan is to continue to improve them continuously.

On Thursday, AstraZeneca forecast core operating expenses to rise by a low to mid-single digit percentage in 2023.

“We think this result/guidance is good given the concerns about margins coming into the results,” said Barclays analyst Emily Field.

In 2023, adjusted earnings per share are expected to grow by a “high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage” at constant currency rates, while revenue is expected to grow by a “low- to mid-single-digit percentage.”

Hargreaves fund manager Steve Clayton said the company’s pipeline is 1 per year billion dollars that it has many candidates with winning potential – if it can turn them into approved drugs, it could maintain a sector-leading growth rate for the next few years. Lansdown, which holds AstraZeneca shares.

“But pipelines are known to leak, so AstraZeneca has a huge case to prove,” he added.

FOURTH QUARTER

The drugmaker reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, although revenue came in shy of analyst estimates compiled by the company, hurt by lower sales of its COVID vaccine and slightly lower-than-expected sales of some key drugs.

Medicine in China prices remains under pressure, and less so before the country’s recent abandonment of its zero-Covid policy sick was diagnosed and cared for.

Sales started to pick up in the second half of 2022 and rose 3% at constant exchange rates in the fourth quarter.

20 in AstraZeneca shares because of its success in oncology and recently selling rare disease drugs20of the year january has outperformed its competitors in recent years by gaining 41% since

Its stock also rose during the first few years of the pandemic after it developed a COVID vaccine with Oxford University.

Sales fell as shots by Pfizer ( PFE.N ) and Moderna ( MRNA.O ) dominated the market.

AstraZeneca outperformed its competitors

CEO Soriot said in a media briefing that he does not plan to step down as CEO anytime soon, although the board has “several potential successors.”

Reporting by Natalie Grover and Maggie Fick; Edited by Josephine Mason and Elaine Hardcastle

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

2023-02-09 20:08:53
Source – reuters

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