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Pharma & Bio Ingredients
Sanofi-Aventis raised its earnings outlook for 2006 on Monday but reported ongoing pressure on sales from European price reductions and generic competition in the US.
The world's third-largest drugmaker said earnings per share should grow about 25 per cent in 2005 compared to a previous estimate.
Fifty per cent growth in Sanofi's vaccines business helped net sales meet the lower end of expectations.
However, policy reforms in France and Germany reduced prices in the group's main European market, Sanofi said. New generic rivals to four blockbuster drugs, including the hayfever drug Allegra and diabetes treatment Amaryl, also cramped sales in the US, which account for about 30 per cent of turnover, and cut nearly three percentage points off growth in its blockbuster list.
Sanofi faces new threats from generic copies of its top selling drugs in 2006, with legal challenges pending to patents on both Plavix and Lovenox, among others.
But growth in its vaccines business offset the pressure on pharmaceutical sales. Sanofi said the US influenza vaccination season in 2005 had been its most successful ever, and sales of a new meningitis and pneumonia vaccine grew 137 per cent over 2005.
Sanofi expects to launch its experimental anti-obesity drug Acomplia in the second quarter of 2006, Hanspeter Spek, the company's executive vice-president, told a conference call. Sanofi see the drug as a potential blockbuster and has said it could generate sales as high as €3bn a year.
