AstraZeneca quarterly net profit rises 2% on strong cancer drug sales

Strong cancer drug sales lifted Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca’s second-quarter earnings above expectations, helping the company maintain its 2026 outlook.

Net profit climbed more than 2% to $2.51 billion (€2.2bn) in the three months to the end of June compared with the same period last year, driven by continued strong growth in sales of its cancer medicines. AstraZeneca said total revenue increased 5% at constant exchange rates to $15.38bn (€13.49bn) in the quarter, driven by growth in cancer and rare disease medicines. Reflecting strong underlying profitability, the company reported core earnings per share of $2.63, up 18% at constant exchange rates, which beat analysts’ forecast of $2.48. AstraZeneca's chief executive Pascal Soriot said the company was "on track" to deliver its ambition of $80bn (€70.15bn) in total revenue by 2030, despite an unexpected late-stage trial failure earlier this month. Shares in the company were up 1.4% in early European trading. This follows a slump in early July after its drug Wainua failed to meet targets, in a rare setback for the drugmaker. "We remain confident in the strength of our pipeline and have more than twenty high-value readouts due over the next 18 months," Soriot said on Monday. Alongside its blockbuster cancer medicines, AstraZeneca is investing in treatments for obesity. Results released in June showed that patients taking the highest dose of AstraZeneca’s experimental weight-loss pill, elecoglipron, lost an average of 10.5% of their body weight after 26 weeks, with weight loss reaching 11.8% after 36 weeks. If confirmed in further trials, the treatment could mark AstraZeneca’s entry into the highly lucrative weight-loss drug market, currently dominated by Denmark’s Novo Nordisk and US-based Eli Lilly.     Yenibakis-Business