LONDON: AstraZeneca's chief executive remains confident in the drugmaker's ability to reach more than $40 billion in annual revenue in 2023, despite weakening sales of older medicines and uncertainty about those in the pipeline.
The British group first gave its bullish long-term forecast that revenue would hit $45 billion back in 2014, as it fended off a takeover attempt by Pfizer.
Since then a stronger dollar means the target has shifted slightly but Pascal Soriot said nothing had changed fundamentally.
"Our forecast is still in line with what we expected (in 2014)," he told Reuters after reporting results.
"We will have more oncology sales and a bit less diabetes sales than we anticipated. But the totality of the forecast remains the same."
Soriot said he last updated the board on the long-range plan in November, at which time the $45 billion 2014 target equated to between $40.5 billion and $41.0 billion at prevailing exchange rates.
"We haven't updated that recently based on the dollar today but, intuitively, I would say it is probably still above $40 billion," he said.
A major factor in determining 2023 sales will be the success of AstraZeneca's new cancer drugs. Some, like Tagrisso and Lynparza, are already delivering but there is big uncertainty about two immunotherapy drugs, durvalumab and tremelimumab.
AstraZeneca hopes durvalumab will work on its own in first-line lung cancer in a minority of people who are particularly amenable to immunotherapy and, more importantly, that the two drugs together will help the majority or even all patients. "We remain confident, based on what we've seen, that mono should work and that the combo has a good chance," he said. Investors are worried about AstraZeneca's combination clinical trial, after rival Bristol-Myers Squibb decided not to seek accelerated approval for its very similar two-drug cocktail.
Soriot, however, said an early filing for the Bristol combination had always been a long shot and the news did not undermine AstraZeneca's efforts.
"Everyone is trying to read the tea leaves and a number of people are using bad tea," he said.
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