Growing demand for new drugs helped GlaxoSmithKline beat forecasts for fourth-quarter earnings by a small margin, offsetting a continued slide in sales of its older Advair respiratory medicine.
New HIV drugs Tivicay and Triumeq once again showed strong growth.
Importantly, there was also an encouraging pick-up in demand for new inhaled lung drugs Breo and Anoro.
Both Breo and Anoro had a disappointing start in the key US market as GSK struggled to secure coverage for them in insurance plans, but recently prescriptions have increased.
Sales, in sterling terms, rose 2% to £6.29 billion in the three months ended December 31, generating core earnings per share (EPS) down 34 percent at 18.1 pence.
Analysts on average had forecast sales of £6.25 billion and core EPS, which excludes certain items, of 17.9 pence, according to Thomson Reuters.
GSK stuck to its 2016 forecast, first issued last May, for double-digit core EPS growth at constant currencies.
It reiterated that the dividend, one of the stock's main attractions with a yield of around 6%, would be held steady through 2017.
Profits at Britain's biggest drugmaker have been pressured both by Advair's decline and last year's $20 billion asset swap with Novartis, which raised its exposure to consumer healthcare at the expense of higher-margin pharmaceuticals.
In the long term, chief executive Andrew Witty believes the shift will create a sustainable and less volatile business, but some investors are calling for a spin-off of the non prescription consumer healthcare unit.
Witty has not ruled out such a break-up, although he first wants to boost margins in the consumer division, which operates as a GSK-controlled joint venture with Novartis.
The changing shape of the group's business makes it particularly important that the core pharmaceuticals operation continues to deliver.
GSK now predicts 11 key new products will deliver sales of £6 billion by 2018, two years earlier than initially expected.
The industry as a whole has seen an improvement in research productivity in recent years, with US new drug approvals in 2015 at a 19-year high, and GSK said its rate of return on R&D investment had been maintained at 13%.
But while more drugs may be getting to market, it is often hard to get them quickly adopted and companies also face growing political pressure over the high prices they frequently charge.
