Roche’s accounts say that the era of anti-Covid tests is over
The demand for anti-Covid tests decreases and also reduces Roche's revenues which, however, still sees sales grow thanks to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics divisions. All the details
Declining demand for anti-Covid tests causes Roche revenues to decline "as expected", however, quarterly sales grow thanks to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics divisions. Estimates for the entire year confirmed. These are the main results announced by the Swiss multinational for the first quarter.
LESS AND LESS ANTI-COVID TESTS
Three years after the start of the pandemic, the demand for anti-Covid tests has fallen significantly and therefore, as expected, Roche's revenues also suffered a 7% drop to 15.32 billion francs (15.61 billion EUR).
In fact, the diagnostics division reported a 28% decrease as sales of anti-Covid tests fell to 0.3 billion Swiss francs in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 1.9 billion in the same period of the previous year, when the demand was exceptionally high.
SECTORS DRIVING SALES
Excluding this, however, specifies the Basel-based company, the group's quarterly sales grew by 8%, with an increase of 9% in the pharmaceutical division (11.7 billion Swiss francs) and 4% in diagnostics (3.6 billion Swiss francs).
“We recorded strong growth in both divisions' core businesses in the first quarter, which more than offset the expected decline in sales of anti-Covid tests,” said Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker.
ANTICANCER DRUGS AND OPHTHALMIC SECTOR
In particular, significant advances have been made in anticancer drugs for the blood and in the ophthalmic sector.
“In the first quarter – Schinecker specified – we made progress in our pipeline, especially with regard to blood cancers. In addition to recent approvals for our bispecific antibody drugs, Lunsumio and Columvi, we just received U.S. approval of Polivy as a first-line treatment for an aggressive form of blood cancer.”
BEST SELLING PRODUCTS
The top five Roche medicines that contributed to the increase in sales generating 1.1 billion Swiss francs were Vabysmo (eye diseases), Ocrevus (multiple sclerosis), Hemlibra (haemophilia), Evrysdi (spinal muscular atrophy) and Tecentriq (immunotherapy of cancer).
Especially Vabysmo, which only launched in early 2022, has become the division's main growth driver and the company hopes that, following positive phase III data for retinal vein occlusion, it will soon be expanded to treat this too. pathology.
In the diagnostic division, on the other hand, sales were driven by immunodiagnostic products (+9%), in particular cardiac tests. Further impetus to growth came from basic virology (+12%), blood screening (+15%) and diagnostic solutions for the detection and monitoring of cervical cancer (+22%).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/i-conti-di-roche-dicono-che-e-finita-lera-dei-test-anti-covid/ on Wed, 26 Apr 2023 11:03:59 +0000.