AstraZeneca is exploring potential deals in China, declaring the market “completely open” to foreign drugmakers.
Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, has just returned from two weeks in the country, where the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has signed three licensing partnerships in recent months.
“Three business development deals and more to come. And we definitely could make acquisitions. There is no limitation to this,” he said on Thursday, as the company unveiled its quarterly financial results.
He pointed to an “explosion of biotech companies that are coming up with innovative medicines and new technologies”.
AstraZeneca is the largest foreign pharmaceutical company by sales in China.
Soriot added that there was no sign of pressure from outside of China — for example, from the US or Europe — to discourage the company from making investments in the country.
In the first quarter of 2023, AstraZeneca beat expectations on sales and earnings, as rising revenue from cancer drugs helped compensate for a $1.5bn drop in sales of Covid-19 medicines.
The UK’s largest company by market capitalisation reported total revenue of $10.9bn, down 4 per cent year-on-year but it beat consensus forecasts of $10.6bn. Sales of oncology treatments rose 19 per cent year-on-year at constant exchange rates.
Excluding Covid-19 medicines, total sales rose 15 per cent year on year at constant exchange rates.
Soriot said the company had seen positive data from clinical trials during the quarter that could expand the use of its cancer drugs into new patient groups.
He said the company’s performance was “particularly strong” in emerging markets, where sales rose 22 per cent year on year excluding Covid-19 drugs and at constant exchange rates.
Sales of the vaccine AstraZeneca developed with the University of Oxford, which have been outpaced by the mRNA jabs from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, dropped by 98 per cent to $28mn.
Revenue from its antibody treatment Evusheld, which protects people who do not respond to vaccines, fell 73 per cent to $127mn after the US regulator removed its authorisation because it cannot tackle the prevalent sub-variants of the virus. The company is developing a second-generation product to target these strains.
Core earnings per share were $1.92, higher than the average analyst estimate of $1.71.
The FTSE 100 company maintained its full-year guidance, based on average exchange rates in 2022. It said it expected total revenue to increase by a low-to-mid single-digit percentage, and by a low double-digit percentage when excluding Covid-19 medicines. It forecast that core earnings per share growth would be in the high single digits or low double digits.
During the quarter AstraZeneca announced plans to acquire US biotech Cincor for $1.8bn, as it seeks to expand its pipeline of heart and kidney drugs.
AstraZeneca chair Leif Johansson will step down at the company’s annual meeting later on Thursday after more than 10 years in the job, to be replaced by board member Michel Demaré. Soriot thanked Johansson for his “outstanding leadership” and “contribution to our return-to-growth strategy”.
