Switzerland's Roche surpassed market expectations for adjusted net income in the first six months of the year, helped by sales of new breast cancer drug Perjeta and established blood cancer medicine Rituxan, as well as a one-off gain from its pensions scheme. Core earnings per share, which are adjusted for certain items, rose 7 percent to 7.74 Swiss francs ($7.86), where analysts had expected 7.52 francs on average.
Sales of the group's three major established cancer medicines - Herceptin, Avastin and Rituxan with more than 6 billion francs in annual sales each - continued to climb but Roche needs to push promising new drug as sales of its ageing best-sellers are expected to plateau and decline over the next few years.
"Over a 12-month period we are actually launching five new medicines, this is an unprecedented number of new launches in the Roche history in such a short period of time," Chief Executive Severin Schwan told journalists in a conference call.
Rituxan, which was approved in Europe in 1998, still saw sales rise 5 percent in local currencies to 1.88 billion francs in the second quarter, ahead of analysts' expectation for 1.83 billion.
Among new drugs, sales of Perjeta jumped a currency-adjusted 35 percent to 467 million, just ahead of the consensus estimate of 449 million.
The company also saw a one-off accounting effect of 426 million francs benefiting its pension plan.