By Cecilia Butini

 

AstraZeneca PLC on Thursday lifted its guidance for the full year after reporting a swing to net profit and higher sales for the third quarter of the year, which both beat consensus expectations.

The Anglo-Swedish pharma major swung to a pretax profit of $922 million from a pretax loss of $2 billion the year prior, when it took hits from fair-value adjustments to Alexion inventories after acquiring the company.

After tax, profit was $1.64 billion compared with a loss of $1.65 billion the year prior. Analysts had expected the company to post a net profit of $629 million.

Core earnings per share were $1.67, up 55% from the prior-year figure, beating analysts' expectations of $1.52.

Revenue rose to $11 billion in the quarter from $9.87 billion the year prior, boosted by growth in all disease areas as well as from the addition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and beating analysts' expectations of $10.84 billion.

Revenue at the company's oncology segment grew by 24% in the first nine months of the year while oncology product sales rose 20%.

AstraZeneca reported a decline in revenue for its Covid-19 vaccine, as it had previously foreseen. The shot totaled revenue of $180 million, down from $1.05 billion in the third quarter of 2021 when the company started selling it at a profit. In general, revenue in certain markets, such as emerging markets, declined as a result of lower sales of the vaccine.

Key medicines such as lung-cancer treatment Tagrisso, liver-cancer treatment Imfinzi and ovarian-cancer drug Lynparza all showed an uptick in sales in the third quarter, the company said.

The company raised its outlook on core earnings per share as it expects the metric to increase by a high-20s to low-30s percentage, up from a previous outlook of growth in the mid-to-high 20s percentage.

Total revenue is still expected to increase by a low-20s percentage as the company had previously forecast.

 

Write to Cecilia Butini at cecilia.butini@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 10, 2022 03:23 ET (08:23 GMT)

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