AstraZeneca plc has posted small gain in reported net profit during the first quarter ended March 2015 to $552 million as against $506 million, despite lower net sales of $5,748 million as compared to 6,416 million in the corresponding quarter of last year. (Its core net profit, however, declined to $1,368 million from $1,471 million). Its products sales declined by 3 per cent due to entry of generic product for Nexium in US from mid-February 2015 as well as an adverse impact from the change in accounting for the US branded pharma fee of $56 million.
Its R&D expenditure increased by 13 per cent to $1,356 million from $1,200 million. Significant progress was made across the respiratory, inflammation and autoimmunity (RIA) pipeline, which included five programs in pivotal studies ore registration. The pipeline also has several promising assets in inflammatory and autoimmune disease areas. The sales of Brilinta/Brilique increased by 32 per cent to $131 million. Nexium and Synagis for infection, neuroscience and gastrointestinal treatment declined by 31 per cent and 38 per cent to $644 million and 204 million respectively. Similarly, Seroquel XR sales declined by 10 per cent to $262 million.
Its US sales declined by 14 per cent to $2,169 million from $2,513 million and that in Europe went down by 18 per cent to $1,340 million from $1630 million. However its sales in China moved up by 24 per cent to $726 million from $584 million.
Restructuring charges of $213 million were taken in the quarter. The company continues to make good progress in implementing the fourth phase of restructuring. The construction activity for setting up new Global R&D Centre and corporate Headquarters on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus was commenced in this quarter.
Pascal Soriot, chief executive officer, commenting on the results, said, "Our encouraging performance in the quarter supports our full year guidance. Total Revenue grew by 1%, with the growth platforms representing 56%, after particularly strong results in emerging markets and with Brilinta/Brilique. Our co-commercialisation agreement for Movantik in the US was a good illustration of how we will bring important medicines to patients and externalisation value to our shareholders.”
"Our pipeline progressed well in each of our therapy areas. Highlights included the positive top-line results from the phase III PINNACLE programme for our respiratory medicine PT003 and data from the PEGASUS study for Brilinta/Brilique in cardiovascular disease. We received two submission acceptances for new medicines, two FDA Orphan-Drug and two Fast-Track designations. We look forward to presenting data through the year.”
"We also continued to reinforce our Oncology franchise and now have 72 trials underway, including 31 in Immuno-Oncology. The latest AZD9291 data, which showed strong clinical benefit of 13.5 months progression-free survival, and the Fast-Track designation by the FDA for MEDI4736, both for patients with lung cancer, illustrate the rapid progress we are making in this area. Our strategic collaboration with Celgene, a leader in haematology, will maximise the potential of our immuno-oncology assets in the very important haematology indications, and our collaboration with Innate Pharma will further strengthen our immuno-oncology franchise.”