Hafslund Nycomed: Improved Sales, Flat Profits

On sales up 12% to 5.33 billion Norwegian kroner ($814.9 million) for the nine months ended September, Norway's pharmaceutical and energy group Hafslund Nycomed reports operating profits of 1.15 billion kroner ($175.7 million), which represents a 0.1% decline. The accumulated operating profit before R&D costs was 1.72 billion kroner at the end of the third quarter of 1994, compared with 1.68 billion kroner a year earlier, the company notes.

The group's Nycomed Pharma operations produced sales of 2.48 billion kroner, up 8.4%, with operating profit for the division 26.5% higher at 467 million kroner. However, Nycomed Imaging saw nine-month sales drop 1.5% to 1.89 billion kroner and operating profit decline 4.7% to 1.15 billion kroner.

It is understood that although bulk sales of its Omnipaque imaging agent recovered from a poor first half, royalties on imaging agents were down, partly because of weak sales in the USA and only modest growth in Japan and by Schering AG in Europe. However, own-sales of Imagopaque have been strong.