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Strong sales of cancer drugs and biopharmaceuticals helped push up revenues at AstraZeneca by 10 per cent in the first quarter, as the drugmaker said it would deepen its manufacturing presence in the US.
The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group on Tuesday reported revenue of $13.6bn in the first three months of the year, up 10 per cent year on year in constant currencies, and declared it was “firmly committed to investing and growing in the US” as the sector braces for the fallout of Donald Trump’s trade war.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot said the FTSE 100 group continued to benefit from its “broad-based source of revenue and global manufacturing footprint”, adding it was planning “even greater” investment beyond its 11 US production sites.
The update comes as pharmaceutical groups, including AstraZeneca, prepare themselves for potential US tariffs. Though the industry has so far benefited from exemptions, Trump has repeatedly said he planned to apply levies to the sector.
Soriot told reporters that the company’s tariff-related exposure was limited and would fall further as it shifted manufacture of European-made products to the US. “Beyond 2025, any impact will be shortlived, because of the ability we have to move things around,” he said.
He added: “When you see the amount of investment that is currently going into the United States, it really sends a very strong signal that Europe has to contribute to . . . pharmaceutical innovation a lot more. Because, unfortunately, otherwise all these jobs — whether they are manufacturing jobs or R&D jobs — are going to move to the US over time.”
AstraZeneca derived about 40 per cent of its sales from the US in the first three months of the year and had already committed to investing $3.5bn in America by the end of 2026 as part of a plan to meet an ambitious target of almost doubling revenues by $80bn by 2030. Soriot said the group was making “excellent progress” towards that goal.
AstraZeneca shares were down 3 per cent in lunchtime trading in London, which analysts attributed to sales growth being slightly lower than forecasts.
However, the company’s core earnings per share — a key metric in the industry — increased 21 per cent to $2.49, well ahead of consensus forecasts. Pre-tax profits were up 21.5 per cent year on year to $3.4bn.
Meanwhile, currency-adjusted revenues climbed at least 9 per cent in all regions outside China, in a sign of the drugmaker’s broad-based global business and the strength of demand for its oncology portfolio. Oncology division sales rose 13 per cent, helped by expansions in the use of existing drugs.
Sales at the company’s China business increased 5 per cent, as it sought to manage a scandal that led to the detention of a top executive. The group said it might be penalised up to five times the $1.6mn the Shenzhen City Customs Office suspects it owes in unpaid importation taxes.
China’s investigation into AstraZeneca triggered the detention in October of Leon Wang, who oversaw the country in his former role as executive vice-president of the international region.
The company said it had been separately informed by Chinese authorities that it had made no illegal gain from alleged infringements of personal information regulations.
Soriot said the company had “taken accountability” for what had happened in China and made changes to its operations there.
“We remain very committed to China,” he said. “It’s an important market for us: not only because millions of patients need our medicines, but also because China has become a very important . . . engine of innovation in our industry.”
