LONDON: British pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca said Friday that its Covid vaccine generated $275 million (227 million euros) in sales in the first quarter, as its chief executive defended the company’s performance in the face of EU legal action.
This is the first time that the company has disclosed figures from sales of one of the world’s leading vaccines, which it sells on a not-for-profit basis. AstraZeneca has delivered about 68 million doses of the vaccine, which was developed with the University of Oxford and has been instrumental in Britain’s rapid vaccination drive.
However, public confidence in the jab has been dented over links to very rare blood clots, and the company is also mired in a legal fight with the EU over delivery shortfalls.
“I don’t think we ever overpromised... more than we thought we could deliver,” chief executive Pascal Soriot told reporters on Friday, insisting there were no regrets.
“What we communicated at the time was based on the capacity that we had put together.”
Soriot noted that AstraZeneca was the second largest supplier to the EU after US firm Pfizer.
The bulk of AstraZeneca’s jab sales during the first quarter — $224 million worth — were in Europe, the company said.
A total $43 million were in emerging markets, and $8 million in the rest of the world, it added.
AstraZeneca vaccine production had been rapidly assembled following the start of the outbreak in early 2020.
The Covid jab revenue data was contained in a results statement showing that AstraZeneca’s net profit doubled in the first quarter to $1.56 billion from a year earlier. Total revenue jumped 15 percent to $7.32 billion in the reporting period, boosted by strong sales of new cancer drugs.
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