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AstraZeneca has said strong sales of cancer drugs and biopharmaceuticals helped push up revenues by 10 per cent in the first quarter, as the drugmaker said it was committed to growing in the US.
The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group on Tuesday reported turnover of $13.6bn in the first three months of the year, up 10 per cent year on year in constant currencies, and said it was “firmly committed to investing and growing in the US” as the sector braces for the fallout of Donald Trump’s trade war.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot said the FTSE 100 group continued to benefit from its “broad-based source of revenue and global manufacturing footprint”, and that it was planning to expand investment beyond its 11 US production sites.
The update comes as pharmaceutical groups including AstraZeneca prepare themselves for potential US tariffs. Though the industry has so far benefited from exemptions, Trump has repeatedly said he plans to apply levies to the sector.
AstraZeneca derived about 40 per cent of its sales from the US in the first three months of the year and had already committed to investing $3.5bn in the US by the end of 2026 as part of a plan to meet an ambitious target of almost doubling revenues by $80bn by 2030. Soriot said on Tuesday that the group was making “excellent progress” towards that goal.
Core earnings per share — a key metric in the industry — increased 21 per cent to $2.49, well ahead of consensus forecasts.
Meanwhile currency-adjusted revenues climbed by at least 9 per cent in all regions outside China, in a sign of the drugmaker’s broad-based global business and the strength of demand for its oncology portfolio. Oncology division sales rose 13 per cent to $5.6bn at constant exchange rates, helped by expansions in the use of existing drugs.
Sales at the company’s China business increased 5 per cent, as it sought to manage a scandal that led to the detention of a top executive. The group said it might be penalised up to five times the $1.6mn the Shenzhen City Customs Office suspects it owes in unpaid importation taxes. AstraZeneca shares fell 4 per cent in early trading in London.
China’s investigation into AstraZeneca triggered the detention in October of Leon Wang, who oversaw the country in his former role as executive vice-president of the international region.
The company said it had been separately informed by Chinese authorities that it had made no illegal gain from alleged infringements of personal information regulations. It said it continued to co-operate fully with Chinese authorities.
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