Even as Roche executives on Thursday espoused confidence in the company\u2019s resilience and growth potential over the next several years, a mix of exchange rate fluctuations and lackluster pharmaceutical sales led to a worse-than-expected third quarter for the Swiss drug giant.<\/p>\n
For the first nine months of 2025, Roche\u2019s overall sales grew<\/a> 7% year over year at constant currencies to 45.9 billion Swiss francs (nearly $58 billion), the company announced Thursday. The bulk of that growth can be attributed to the company\u2019s pharmaceutical division, which has clocked sales growth of 9% at constant exchange rates over the nine-month stretch.<\/p>\n As in previous earnings periods, Roche\u2019s pharma momentum was attributed to the recent performance of Phesgo, Xolair, Hemlibra, Vabysmo and Ocrevus.<\/p>\n Roche\u2019s earnings release reported the company\u2019s sales performance from January through September, and in that span, all five of those franchises charted revenue increases. But looking at the period from July through September specifically, that shine lost some of its luster.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s third-quarter group sales\u2014which also include the performance of Roche\u2019s diagnostics unit\u2014landed at 14.9 billion francs (around $19 billion), down a little over 1% from the same period in 2024, analysts at ODDO BHF wrote in a note to clients Thursday.<\/p>\n Pharmaceutical sales were also down slightly for the quarter, with Ocrevus, Hemlibra and Vabysmo all logging sales declines and coming in below the analysts\u2019 expectations for the three-month stretch.<\/p>\n While the numbers may look disappointing, some blame lies at the feet of volatile exchange rates, Roche\u2019s chief financial officer, Alan Hippe, said on a conference call, stressing that \u201cthe major driver here is the U.S. dollar.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the year starting off \u201cquite well,\u201d the U.S. dollar has subsequently weakened against the Swiss franc, Hippe explained. Those exchange rate woes have prompted Roche to forecast a -5% impact on sales and a -8% impact on core earnings per share for the year, the CFO said.<\/p>\n Since Roche generates approximately 48% of its sales in the U.S., the company is at a disadvantage when it converts American revenues into its reporting currency. The dollar has lost about 13% of its value versus the Swiss franc so far this year.<\/p>\n Roche’s pharma sector<\/p>\n Breaking down the individual performance of Roche\u2019s star drugs, breast cancer offering Phesgo has grown sales an impressive 54% year-over-year during the first 9 months of the year, generating 1.8 billion Swiss francs over the period.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, global conversion rates to the drug\u2014referring to patients switching to Phesgo from its infused predecessor medicines Perjeta and Herceptin\u2014climbed to 51% in Q3, Teresa Graham, Roche\u2019s pharmaceuticals CEO, said on the call.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we have already achieved our goal of 50% conversion, we are now increasing our ambition to hit a global conversion rate of more than 60% before the advent of biosimilars,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s hemophilia A injection Hemlibra has performed well on a year-to-date basis but saw third-quarter sales drop to 1.1 billion francs, down around 3% from the sum it generated for the period in 2024, according to ODDO BHF.<\/p>\n Despite the Q3 hiccup, Roche is now raising its 2025 sales growth expectations for Hemlibra to 10%, up from a previous mid-single-digit estimate, Graham said on the call.<\/p>\n On the neurology front, Roche\u2019s multiple sclerosis workhorse Ocrevus suffered a roughly 1% sales decline for the quarter, clocking in revenues at 1.7 billion francs ($2.1 billion). As with Phesgo, Roche is currently aiming to convert U.S. patients on Ocrevus to a new subcutaneous formulation, dubbed Ocrevus Zunovo, which was approved<\/a> last September.<\/p>\n Still, Roche seems to be having some trouble getting the subQ launch off the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important to remember that for many practices, switching to Zunovo is associated with logistical challenges,\u201d Graham explained. \u201cWe are hoping to manage those, and we expect Zunovo uptake to accelerate further in coming quarters.\u201d In the U.S., around 800 healthcare providers are now prescribing Ocrevus Zunovo, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cThe logistical challenges for Zunovo\u2014they\u2019re not that dissimilar than from what we saw with Phesgo when we were moving Phesgo into the oncology setting,\u201d Graham elaborated later on during the call.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Roche is downgrading its sales expectations for macular degeneration and macular edema drug Vabysmo for the year, lowering its forecast from roughly 20% growth to 15%, Graham noted. She attributed those reduced expectations to the \u201ccontraction\u201d of the U.S. market for branded ophthalmology drugs.<\/p>\n At the same time, however, Vabysmo continues to gain ground in the market for anti-VEGF treatments, both in the U.S. and abroad, she said.<\/p>\n While performance in the quarter may have been shaky, Roche believes it\u2019s well positioned in the back half of the decade.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do believe that we\u2019re one of the companies which have less biosimilar erosion,\u201d Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker said on the earnings call. \u201cIf you look at the next couple of years, we do believe we can compensate that with the medicines that we have in hand, and that we will continue to grow at least until \u201928 and thereafter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe we are set up for growth, and we also know that we\u2019re not done with [business development],\u201d he continued. \u201cWe can continue to invest in BD and bring in more opportunities that will continue to drive growth.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. policy considerations<\/p>\n As Roche reported on the performance of its leading drugs, many investors sitting in on the call pressed the company on potential drug pricing negotiations with the U.S. government, as well as the company\u2019s standing in the U.S. as it pertains to pharmaceutical import tariffs.<\/p>\n On the tariff point, Roche boasts 13 manufacturing sites in the U.S. and has also been working to make its production operations more efficient in recent years, Schinecker said on the call, noting that \u201cthere is nothing for us at this stage where we would be concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n Several investors pressed the chief executive on the status of presumed talks between Roche and the White House as well. In recent weeks, Pfizer<\/a>, AstraZeneca<\/a> and Merck KGaA\u2019s EMD Serono<\/a> have each struck accords to lower certain drug prices in the U.S. in line with President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cmost favored nation\u201d (MFN) cost reduction agenda.<\/p>\n In all three cases, the drugmakers who struck the deals have won temporary reprieve from Trump\u2019s tariffs.<\/p>\n \u201cI can say that we\u2019ve been in discussions with the U.S. government for most part of this year,\u201d Schinecker said on the topic of MFN talks. He noted that the company\u2019s recently debuted<\/a> direct-to-patient program for its influenza treatment Xofluza was one of the price reduction measures discussed with the government.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s MFN maneuvers broadly seek to align the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. with the prices paid in comparable developed nations. While Schinecker did not go into detail about the fine details of Roche\u2019s government negotiations, he did allude to broader conversations between governments around drug price equalization\u2014as well as a reported probe<\/a> that the U.S. means to launch into drug pricing practices abroad.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a discussion that the U.S. government is having with us, but also with other governments around the world, to have a mechanism so that there is a different way and better sharing of cost for innovation, because this is what it is about in pharma,\u201d Schinecker said on an earlier call with journalists.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s clear that countries with less money should pay less, but also countries which have more money should pay more,\u201d he continued, noting that the U.S. has proposed a sliding pricing framework that would be based on countries\u2019 GDPs.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even as Roche executives on Thursday espoused confidence in the company\u2019s resilience and growth potential over the next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[124],"tags":[230,41939,7670,2536,134,112,2050,5074,32276],"class_list":["post-86506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-roche","tag-earnings","tag-fierce-pharma-homepage","tag-hemlibra","tag-pharma","tag-roche","tag-tariffs","tag-teresa-graham","tag-thomas-schinecker","tag-vabysmo"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116769419842066563","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86506","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=86506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}