Germany's Merck saw 17% sales growth in 2016

German pharma and life sciences company Merck KGaA (MRK: DE) saw its shares drop as much as 3% to 100.00 euros this morning, after it reported strong sales and earnings for 2016 but offered a tepid forecast for the current year.

Net sales for 2016 increased sharply by 17.0% to 15.0 billion euros ($15.84 billion). All regions contributed to organic sales growth of 3.2%. The purchase of Sigma-Aldrich was responsible for an acquisition-related sales increase of 16.4%. By contrast, negative exchange rate effects, which were mainly attributable to Latin American currencies, lowered group sales by 2.6%.

Earning before interest and taxes (EBIT) rose by 34.6% to 2.5 billion euros. EBIT/depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), the company’s key earnings indicator, climbed 23.7% to 4.5 billion euros. Thanks to the Healthcare and Life Science business sectors, this figure was considerably higher than the previous year’s 3.6 billion euros. Earnings per share pre-exceptionals rose by 27.5% to 6.21 euros. The proposal to the Annual General Meeting on April 28, 2017 will be to increase the dividend by 0.15 euros to 1.20 euros per share. Merck will have thus increased its dividend every year since 2009.

“2016 was a successful year for Merck. In Healthcare, two of our compounds are in registration. In our Life Science business sector, we made rapid progress with the integration of Sigma-Aldrich. We have moved ahead faster and even better than expected with the realization of synergies. At the same time, the business generated notable organic growth. With its four strong businesses, Performance Materials showed robustness in a challenging market environment. We maintained our strategically important market leadership in display materials and purposefully drove new technologies forward,” said Stefan Oschmann, chairman of the executive board and chief executive of Merck.