Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, headquartered in Israel and world's leading generic pharma company, has achieved outstanding financial performance during the year ended December 2007 on account of strong growth in revenues in North America. The company's net profit has taken a jump of 257.5 per cent and touched to US $1,952 million from $546 million in the previous year. The net sales increased almost by 12 per cent to $9,408 million from $8,408 million. With smart growth in profitability, earning per share worked out to $2.54 as against $0.72 in the last period.
The company's total pharmaceutical sales increased by 13 per cent to $8,847 million from $ 7,821 million. However, its API sales to third party declined by 4 per cent to $561 million. The pharmaceutical sales in North America reached a record $5,162 million as against $4,759 million, a growth of 8 per cent and that in Europe touched to $2,245 million from $ 1,850 million, a strong growth of 21 per cent. The sales in other region have increased by 19 per cent to $ 1,440 million.
Shlomo Yanai, president and CEO, commented, "2007 was an outstanding year for Teva - a year in which we achieved record-breaking results across the board, fortified our leadership in key markets, and significantly grew our business. Surpassing Teva's unprecedented growth in 2006 posed a major challenge for us going into 2007. We not only met this challenge but in fact exceeded our own ambitious targets a clear demonstration of the unique strengths and capabilities that we believe will enable Teva to continue its tradition of continuous, profitable growth and value creation for our shareholders. We expect the significant momentum that we generated in 2007 to continue throughout 2008, resulting in another excellent year for Teva".
Teva had 160 product applications awaiting final FDA approval. Collectively, the brand products covered by these applications had annual US sales of approximately $ 101 billion. Teva believes it is the first to file on 49 of these applications relating to products with annual US sales exceeding $ 40 billion. Teva received 1160 generic approvals in Europe as compared to 89 compounds in 2006. Further, it has 3,166 marketing authorization applications pending approval in 30 European countries (including the CEE), corresponding to 154 compounds in 310 formulations.
The increase in sales is attributable to higher generic sales in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain and that of Copaxone. Azilect continued to make inroads among the existing products or the treatment of Parkinson's disease in the US and Europe. Azilect is now available in 29 countries, up from 24 at the end of 2006.
Net R&D spending in the fourth quarter totalled $168 million or 6.5 per cent of sales. For the full year 2007, net R&D expenditure reached at $581 million or 6.2 per cent of sales, up from 5.9 per cent in 2006.