Sanofi-aventis has suffered major setback during the first quarter ended March 2011 and its net income declined sharply by 28.9 per cent to Euros 1,218 million from Euros 1,714 million in the corresponding period of last year mainly due to stiff competition. Its net sales also declined by 1.5 per cent to Euros 7,770 million from Euros7,898 million. Emerging markets sales improved by 14.6 per cent to Euros 2,386 million, exceeding the US and Western Europe and accounted for 30.7 per cent of Group sales. Earnings per share moved down to Euro 0.93 from Euro.1.31 in the last period.

The pharmaceutical business declined by 1.6 per cent to Euros 6,583 million mainly generic competition for lovenox, taxotere and ambien CR in he US, for plavix and taxotere in the EU and the impact of austerity measures in EU and health care reform in the US. Lantus sales increased by 13.2 per cent to Euros 925 million. However, the sales of lovenox, taxotere, and plavix declined by 26.5 per cent, 31.6 per cent and 14.4 per cent respectively to Euros 583 million, Euros 383 million and Euros 484 million. Its R&D expenditure declined by 6 per cent to Euros 1,100 million during the quarter under review. The company sales in US declined by 3.3 per cent to Euros 2,165 million and that in Western Europe by 13.5 per cent to Euros 2,251 million.

The sales of generic products increased by 16.9 per cent to Euros 414 million, of which emerging markets contributed Euros 258 million. Generic sales showed strong organic growth in Latin America as well as in Russia supported by the recent acquisitions of Medley in Brazil and Zentiva in Eastern Europe.  

The first quarter consolidated net sales of the human vaccines went up by 9.6 per cent to Euros 602 million, excluding A/H1N1 influenza vaccine sales booked in the first quarter of 2010. The company's sales of Consumer Care sales increased by 40.3 per cent to Euros 712 million, mainly due to higher sales in the emerging markets. Animal Health division reported 11.5 per cent growth in sales to Euros 594 million.

Christopher A Viehbacher, CEO, said, “This quarter, the year-to-year comparison must take into account the absence of non-recurring A/H1N1 sales. I'm particularly satisfied with the performance of our growth platforms which were up 15.5 per cent and now represent almost 60 per cent of Group sales; these businesses have compensated for the impact of generic competition on nets sales and represent the future of our company. As of this quarter, we now fully consolidated Merial, our animal health division which delivered a strong performance. We have also closed the Genzyme transaction and the integration phase has started favourably.”