LONDON: British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca on Monday said net profit rose in its second quarter (Q2), driven once again by strong growth in sales of its cancer drugs.
Profit after tax climbed more than 2% to US$2.5 billion in the three months to the end of June, compared with the same period last year, AstraZeneca said in a results statement.
Total revenue increased 6% to US$15.4 billion in the quarter, thanks to sustained strong demand for its cancer and rare disease medicines.
AstraZeneca reconfirmed its outlook for the full year after its Q2 profit beat analyst expectations.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot said the company was “on track” to deliver its ambition of US$80 billion in total revenue by 2030, despite an unexpected late-stage trial failure earlier this month.
Shares in the company had slumped in early July after its new heart disease drug Wainua failed to meet targets, in a rare setback for the drugmaker.
“We remain confident in the strength of our pipeline and have more than twenty high-value readouts due over the next 18 months,” Soriot said on Monday.
Alongside its blockbuster cancer drugs, the company has been investing in developing a weight-loss drug.
Last month’s trial results showed that its new pill appears to help people lose a similar amount of weight to other GLP-1 oral drugs.
If confirmed by further research, the pill could mark AstraZeneca’s entrance into the massively lucrative weight-loss drug market currently dominated by Denmark’s Novo Nordisk and American giant Eli Lilly.
