Hungary's Richter ups sales growth forecast after posting strong nine-month 2010 results

Chief executive of Hungary’s largest drugmaker Richter Gedeon (RICHT: HB), Erik Bogsch, said the company expects full-year 2010 sales to rise as much as 10% in terms of euros, so long as currency trends “remain supportive,” compared with previous projections of a 5% increase.

The announcement was made following the release of financial results for the first nine months of the year, which showed that sales had reached 215.68 billion forint ($1.1 billion), a 9.4% increase (12.9% in euro terms) when compared with the same period of 2009. Also, Richter has recently entered into deals to expand its women’s health business, first with the acquisition of Switzerland’s PregLem and then with German drugmaker Grunenthal’s oral contraceptives portfolio (The Pharma Letters October 8 and November 5).

The Group recorded positive performance in a number of its key geographies including Hungary, the European Union region and most of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. In Hungary sales totalled 25.69 billion forint in the first three quarters of 2010, which in forint terms represented a 7.6% increase compared to the same period of last year. Price reductions were insignificant during this period while turnover of products launched in the past two years increasingly contributed to the achieved performance.