Roche<\/a>‘s first-half net profit rose 2% to 8.22 billion Swiss francs ($8.96 billion) and sales increased by 8% at constant exchange rates to a better-than expected 30.71 billion francs as the Swiss drugmaker benefited from demand for Covid-19 tests.<\/p>\nIt maintained its full-year forecast for sales to grow at a low- to mid-single-digit rate at constant exchange rates, with core earnings per share growing about the same as sales.<\/p>\n
“Roche expects to increase its dividend in Swiss francs further,” it added. Diagnostics division sales grew 51% in the first half due to high demand for Covid-19 tests and strong momentum in routine testing, Roche said, helping to compensate for a 3% decline in pharmaceuticals sales, although drug sales rose in the second quarter after a weak start to the year.<\/p>\n
“We have achieved good results in the first half, primarily thanks to the demand for our new medicines and Covid-19 tests. The Pharma Division began to grow again in the second quarter. The base diagnostics business shows strong momentum. As expected, demand for Covid-19 tests peaked in the second quarter,” Chief Executive Severin Schwan said.<\/p>\n
Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A photo showing the logo of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche in Basel. SEBASTIEN BOZON | AFP | Getty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[124],"tags":[166,230,1306,134,61100,473,1389,51],"class_list":["post-125146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-roche","tag-business-news","tag-earnings","tag-health-care-industry","tag-roche","tag-roche-bobois-sa","tag-roche-holding-ag","tag-world-economy","tag-zurich"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117206959040709043","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}