Pharmaceutical giant Novartis saw its share price approach record highs at the end of last week, after revealing strong results for the second quarter of the year. The company’s success was driven by a strong portfolio of drugs, including psoriasis and arthritis treatment Cosentyx, heart failure drug Entresto, and cancer medication Lutathera. But the real standout performer may have been a spike in sales of various “copycat” drugs (biosimilars – copies of existing medications that have seen their copyright expire). These lower-priced alternatives to popular branded treatments saw a 16% rise in sales, year on year.
Novartis’s share price approached its all-time high on the back of a strong second quarter
Source: Yahoo Finance
Novartis was able to beat the Street in regards to earnings, delivering $1.34 per share rather than the predicted $1.20 per share. That’s a year on year increase of 20%. Sales also increased by 4% (8%, if you strip out currency effects) to $11.76 billion. That’s a marginal beat against analysts’ expectations of $11.74 billion.
Breaking Novartis’s results down further, the company said that revenue from innovative medicines ($9.3 billion) increased by 5% year on year. Pharmaceutical sales rose by 10% and oncology sales grew by 9%, both over the same timeframe.
The company’s CEO, Vas Narasimhan, said: “Novartis delivered an exceptional first half performance in 2019 as a focused medicines company with strong sales and productivity driving double-digit core operating income growth with margin expansion.”
Disclosure
Dominion holds Novartis in its Global Trends Managed Fund.
Author: Theo Leworthy
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author at the date of publication and not necessarily those of Dominion Capital Strategies Limited or its related companies. The content of this article is not intended as investment advice and will not be updated after publication. Images, video, quotations from literature and any such material which may be subject to copyright is reproduced in whole or in part in this article on the basis of Fair use as applied to news reporting and journalistic comment on events.
