Various business dailies around Europe, having seen the 2002 results from AstraZeneca, look forward to "gloomy prospects" for the company in 2003.
This takes place against the background of its blockbuster, Losec® (oméprazole), facing generics competition in the US since last December.
In 2002, AstraZeneca recorded annual sales of $17.84 billion (+ 9 %) and anticipates for 2003 a fall in its earning per share ($1.5-1.65 compared with $1.84 in 2002). It’s noteworthy that AstaZeneca’s sales at showed strong progress in France (+ 13 %) and in Italy (+ 16 %).
AstaZeneca’s president Tom McKillop stressed that "sales except for Losec® increased by 23 %", while press articles point out that AstraZeneca "launched several products to counter the generic effect". Among them, the successor to Losec®, Nexium®, which generated nearly $2 billion sales in 2002, is "acting like a blockbuster already".
Other drugs could help to support growth of the company’s business, for example, its anti-cancer Iressa®, the Exanta® anticoagulant and the cholesterol lowering agent Crestor®.
AstraZeneca may have a lower exposure to patent expiries over the period of 2002 - 2006 than other companies such as Bayer, Schering-Plough, Amgen, or even Pfizer. The Wall Street Journal, Europe, is confident about the prospect for the company’s statin. Tom McKilllop considers that Crestor® is capable of capturing about a 20 % share of a world market for statins worth about $20 billion.
Keywords : AstraZeneca Results 2002 Outlook 2003 Revenues Losec Crestor Iressa Exanta Generics competition
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