AstraZeneca sold $2.2 billion of the Covid-19 immunizer in the first nine months of the year and posted its first profit from sales of the vaccine.
For the quarter ended Sept. 30, sales of the vaccine totaled $1.05 billion and generated 1% earnings per share.
Upon announcing its results on Friday (12), the largest pharmaceutical company in the United Kingdom said that the perspective is that these numbers will grow again in the last quarter of this year.
“The company now expects to progressively transition the vaccine to modest profitability as new orders are received,” the company said in a statement.
Most vaccine sales between October and December this year are expected to come from existing supply agreements, the company said, adding that it also expected some new orders.
A company spokeswoman confirmed that AstraZeneca would continue to fill existing orders for non-profit developing countries as previously promised.
“We are still honoring our existing agreement with [Universidade de] Oxford and we will continue to serve [esses] ordering at cost price,” she told CNN Business.
The company said that “the vaccine’s limited profit contribution” in the fourth quarter would offset costs related to a Covid-19 antibody combination drug it is testing.
Sales of its Covid-19 vaccine contributed to an increase in AstraZeneca’s total revenue in the first nine months of the year, which increased by nearly a third over the period to $25.4 billion.
The spokeswoman said the company and partners had released “more than 1.5 billion doses of vaccine as of September 30, 2021, for supply in over 170 countries.”
AstraZeneca’s operating profit for the year to date has fallen 63% from the same period in 2020 to $1.3 billion. Profit before tax dropped to $371 million from $2.75 billion a year earlier.
According to the company, the non-profit supply of Covid-19 to AstraZeneca contributed to a drop in core profit margin of six percentage points to 74.1%, along with an increase in overhead and research costs.
(Translated text. Read the original here.)
Reference: CNN Brasil
