Switzerland’s Roche (ROG.S) said that its first-quarter sales fell by 7% because fewer people wanted its COVID-19 therapies and tests. This drop was less severe than experts had expected, though, because a new eye drug brought in a lot more money.
The company said on Wednesday that group income fell to 15.3 billion Swiss francs, which is about $17.2 billion. This is more than the 14.8 billion francs that the market was expecting, thanks to a successful launch of the anti-blindness drug Vabysmo and better-than-expected sales of the COVID antibody drug Ronapreve.
The company, which doesn’t report earnings for its first quarter, said again that sales linked to the pandemic, mostly lab testing, Ronapreve, and a repurposed arthritis drug called Actemra, would drop by 5 billion francs this year.
Roche said that quarterly sales of Vabysmo, an injection that was approved last year to treat a common form of blindness in older people, came in at 432 million francs. This made it the strongest growth driver in the pharmaceuticals business.
CEO Thomas Schinecker, who was previously in charge of diagnostics and has been in charge since March, said that Vabysmo’s sales for the quarter beat expectations by more than 100 million francs.
During a media call, he said, “We are very happy with how quickly and widely the product is being adopted in different markets around the world.”
Roche’s Vabysmo is a competitor to Eylea, which is made by a partnership between Bayer (BAYGn.DE) and Regeneron (REGN.O). Eylea is used to treat a common age-related atrophy of the macula in the back of the eye.
Vabysmo can be injected less often than the usual Eylea schedule, but Bayer and Regeneron are working on a high-dose version of their shot that will give the same benefit.
After starting out higher, Roche shares fell 1.8% at 11:35 GMT on worries that COVID treatment Ronapreve can’t keep doing as well as it has been.
Terence McManus, portfolio manager at Bellevue Asset Management in Kuesnacht, Switzerland, said, “Some of the important pharma growth products are doing better than expected.”
“But Ronapreve is a mixed bag. That helped make the beat, but you can expect that to change a lot in the future because COVID is going away.”
Roche said that they still expected sales and core earnings per share to go down by “low single-digit” percentages in 2023.
