Roche's solid 1st-qtr sales performance beats forecasts

Swiss pharma giant Roche (ROG: SIX) this morning released first-quarter 2016 sales figures, showing that group revenues rose 4% to 12.41 billion Swiss francs ($12.88 billion), a rise of 5% in franc terms, and were better than consensus forecasts of 12.28 billion francs.

Sales of the pharmaceutical business were 9.80 billion francs, up 4% (+5% in SF), while revenues for the company’s Diagnostics division were 2.61 billion francs, a rise of 5% (+4% in SF). Roche, the world’s largest producer of cancer drugs, does not report earnings on a quarterly basis.

Sales in the Pharmaceuticals Division were up 4% to 9.8 billion francs with Europe growing 5%, driven by Perjeta (pertuzumab), MabThera/Rituxan (rituximab) and RoActemra (tocilizumab), first-quarter revenues of which came in at 439 million francs (+33%), 1.83 billion francs (+3%) and 386 million francs (+14%), respectively. Two other major sellers for Roche, Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab), posted revenues of 1.73 billion francs, up 4%, and 1.71 billion, also up 4%, respectively.