Roche dips on Tamiflu decline
pharmafile | October 24, 2008 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â RocheÂ
Roche's sales dropped 2% to 33.3 billion Swiss francs in the first nine months of 2008, due to a sharp – but predicted – fall in demand for its blockbuster flu treatment Tamiflu.
The Swiss pharma company had been riding high on pandemic sales of Tamiflu to governments and corporations, but this year has so far seen sales drop 69% to 428 million Swiss francs.
Excluding the effect of the Tamiflu decline, Roche's group sales rose by 2% in Swiss francs (10% in local currencies), driven by strong performance from its oncology portfolio.
"Sales by both the pharmaceuticals and diagnostics divisions advanced at double-digit rates in local currencies [exluding pandemic sales of Tamiflu], clearly outgrowing their respective markets," commented chief executive Severin Schwan.
"Based on this performance, we again expect a good full-year result and confirm our outlook for 2008."
Schwan added that he was also pleased with Roche's newly-acquired Ventana business.
Cancer diagnostics firm Ventana had sales of 261 million Swiss francs (about £145 million) in the eight months to September 2008. This equates to 4% of Roche's diagnostics division's nine-month revenues of 7.1 billion Swiss francs (about £3.9 billion), which were themselves up 4% in Swiss francs.
Ventana specialises in the analysis of tissue samples and manufactures tests for the HER2 gene in breast cancer. Roche's Herceptin treats HER2-positive breast cancer, and the company hopes its acquisition will boost both diagnostics and drug sales.
Oncology is already a key driver of growth for Roche, and its key cancer drugs include Avastin, MabThera/Rituxan, Tarceva and Xeloda as well as Herceptin.
Combined sales of the five products were up 15% to 14 billion Swiss francs in the first nine months, with the Far East an increasingly strong market for the company.
Sales of Herceptin in Japan are still receiving a boost from last February's approval for an early breast cancer indication. Meanwhile, Xeloda was approved in China for advanced stomach cancer earlier this year.
Worldwide sales of Avastin, for advanced colorectal, lung, breast and kidney cancer, grew 37% to 3.7 billion Swiss francs. This was driven primarily by increased use of the product for metastatic colorectal and breast cancer in western Europe.
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma treatment MabThera was up 16% year on year to 4.3 billion Swiss francs. In July Roche filed an EU application for an indication as a first-line treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common form of adult leukemia.
But it has been a slightly bumpy year for the Basel-based company in the UK, after it was named and shamed in the medical press last month for breaching the UK industry association's Code of Practice.
Roche was suspended from the ABPI in July for at least six months after it was ruled to have brought discredit on the pharma industry by inappropriately supplied Xenical to the operator of several private diet clinics.
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