Roche, Sanofi tout pharma pipelines as earnings fail to excite
pharmaceutical manufacturers Roche And Sanofi’s Recent earnings have largely been as expected, with companies touting the potential of experimental drugs ahead of a looming “patent cliff” for Big Pharma.
Shares of both companies lost less than 1% following the release of earnings before the bell on Thursday.
Both are among pharmaceutical companies whose revenues could fall significantly in the coming years if they don’t fill their pipelines by developing drugs in-house or purchasing drug candidates developed by others.
“On the pipeline side, we’ve had incredible performance on a number of Phase 3 readings that will be beneficial for future growth,” CEO Thomas Schinecker told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday. he said.
“We have a number of drugs that we are currently in the final stages of development and will have up to 19 new drugs that we can bring to market by the end of the decade.”
Focus on innovation
Sanofi reported quarterly improvement on both the top and bottom lines and released its 2026 forecasts largely in line with expectations.
Despite headwinds in its vaccine business, it reported sales growth of 13% at constant currencies and earnings of 1.53 euros ($1.20) per share in the fourth quarter; both were above estimates. Changes in US vaccine policy.
“Growth was fueled by new drugs and Dupixent, reaching a new quarterly high,” CEO Paul Hudson said in a statement.
Similar to Roche, Sanofi projects sales growing in high single digits in 2026 and profit growth “slightly higher than revenue.”
“We anticipate that profitable growth will continue for at least five years,” the company said.
Despite this rise and the newly announced 1 billion euro share buyback, the focus of Sanofi investors continues to be the company’s research and development.
The need to expand the pipeline will put long-term R&D spending and potential future mergers and acquisitions front and center in Sanofi’s Thursday afternoon earnings call, Jefferies analyst Michael Leuchten said in a post-earnings note.
Obesity entry
Apart from the experimental breast cancer drug giredestrant and MS treatment fenebrutinib, Roche is betting heavily on a slice of the lucrative obesity market in the coming years.
The company is facing a significant loss of exclusivity on some of its best-selling drugs, but CEO Schinecker told CNBC it’s “absolutely manageable.”
On Tuesday, the company reported positive Phase 2 clinical trial results for its weight loss candidate CT-388. It showed that the drug led to a 22.5% weight reduction in 48 weeks, on par with its market competitors. Novo Nordisk Wegovy and Eli Lilly Zepbound. The company hopes to compete in an increasingly crowded marketplace through differentiation.
Last year, Roche also entered into a partnership with Danish Zealand Pharma to develop Zealand’s drug petrelintide, an amylin analogue, both alone and in combination with CT-388.
“We do not invest” [the] “This is the first generation of drugs – we’re investing in the next generation,” CEO Schinecker told CNBC on Thursday.
“We are able to differentiate in combination with other therapies that we have at our company, because there are over 200 comorbidities in neurology, in immunology, in cancer, and none of the other players have the kind of portfolio that we have for combinations,” he said, adding that there are windows for differentiation with the longer-lived molecule itself as well as diagnostics.
