ROG.SW<\/a>) reported better than expected first-half operating profit on Thursday, driven by strong sales of breast cancer and asthma treatments.<\/p>\nOperating profit was up 6% at 12 billion Swiss francs ($15.15 billion), above analyst forecasts for around 11.7 billion, driven by higher sales and cost management, it said.<\/p>\n
Roche added that the appreciation of the franc against the U.S. dollar had an adverse impact. In currency-adjusted terms, profit was up 11%.<\/p>\n
Revenues of breast cancer drug Phesgo, a more convenient alternative to Roche’s established Perjeta, jumped 55% to 1.2 billion francs, while asthma and food allergies medicine Xolair grew 34% to 1.45 billion francs – both above forecast.<\/p>\n
Roche’s much-watched Vabysmo, to counter a common form of blindness in the elderly, came in slightly below expectations at 2.07 billion francs.<\/p>\n
However, it was still among the company’s top five growth drivers alongside Phesgo, Xolair, once-monthly haemophilia shot Hemlibra and MS drug Ocrevus.<\/p>\n
“We are confident in our continued strong momentum and resilience of our business due to our innovative on-market portfolio and pipeline,” said CEO Thomas Schinecker.<\/p>\n
He said Roche was still targeting a high single-digit percentage increase in full-year adjusted earnings per share.<\/p>\n
Diagnostics division sales were stable at 7 billion francs, the company said, as growing demand for pathology solutions and blood screening tests offset the effect of China’s healthcare pricing reforms.<\/p>\n
In the United States, sales rose 10% due to Xolair and continuing uptake of its other top four drugs, which more than compensated for a decline in drugs with expired patents.<\/p>\n
Schinecker told a media call that the company was in close talks with the U.S. government on tariffs and had ramped up inventories.<\/p>\n
“In case tariffs will come, we would not be initially impacted,” said Schinecker.<\/p>\n
He said the company had also discussed a direct-to-patient model for selling medicines to U.S. patients, which would help bring down costs quickly by cutting out middlemen.<\/p>\n
Such a model would work for all of Roche’s medicines, said Schinecker.<\/p>\n
$1 = 0.7923 Swiss francs)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Miranda Murray and Bhanvi Satija. Editing by Rachel More and Mark Potter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Miranda Murray and Bhanvi Satija BERLIN (Reuters) -Swiss drugmaker Roche (ROG.SW) reported better than expected first-half operating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[124],"tags":[34547,207,7136,134,34548,276],"class_list":["post-63038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-roche","tag-asthma-treatments","tag-breast-cancer","tag-operating-profit","tag-roche","tag-strong-sales","tag-swiss-francs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116551452176459285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63038","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=63038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}