Roche’s profit rises 7%
The Swiss drugmaker’s strategy of combining medicines to better treat cancers of the breast, blood and bowel is paying off.
|||Berlin - Roche’s profit rose 7 percent in the first half, spurred by the Swiss drugmaker’s strategy of combining medicines to better treat cancers of the breast, blood and bowel.
Roche’s core earnings, which exclude some items, climbed to 7.74 Swiss francs ($7.86) per share from 7.22 francs a year earlier, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said in a statement on Thursday. That exceeded the 7.65-franc estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs is breathing new life into some of its ageing tumour fighters with novel medicines that doctors combine with older ones for extra potency. In the first half, the newer breast cancer drug Perjeta helped buoy sales of the older Herceptin. Chief Executive Officer Severin Schwan said Roche will also adopt the combination strategy for newcomers like Tecentriq, which was introduced in May and works by harnessing the immune system to fight cancer.
“I think the future in this field will be combination therapies,” Schwan said on Bloomberg Television. “We are developing Tecentriq for a number of indications and even more importantly we have another nine new medicines in clinical development.” The experimental medicines are being tested together, meaning “we have now over 50 study programmes ongoing and this will literally revolutionise the way we can treat cancer in the future”.
Roche is mining the drug combination approach in other ways. It won regulatory approval last month to sell its blockbuster Avastin in Europe together with another of its older cancer drugs, Tarceva, for patients with a specific type of advanced lung cancer. And Herceptin is a component of Kadcyla, a recent treatment for breast tumours that bundles the 18-year-old drug with a technology that helps the medication carry chemotherapy directly into malignant cells while bypassing healthy ones.
Sales rose 6 percent to 25 billion francs in the first half, Roche said. The company reiterated it expects sales to grow by low- to mid-single digit at constant exchange rates in 2016. Core earnings per share are targeted to grow ahead of sales at constant exchange rates. Roche also said it plans to raise its dividend. The stock was little changed, falling 0.4 percent to 252 francs in Zurich trading.
BLOOMBERG