Drugs and diagnostic company Roche said its third-quarter sales gained a currency-adjusted 9%, beating market expectations, on higher prescriptions of once-monthly haemophilia shot Hemlibra and recently launched eye drug Vabysmo.
Group sales of 15.14 billion Swiss francs ($17.46 billion) surpassed an analysts' consensus estimate of 14.9 billion francs, based on LSEG data.
The Swiss drugmaker reaffirmed today that it expects growth in 2024 adjusted earnings per share in the "high single-digit range", excluding the effect of currency swings and resolution of tax disputes in 2023.
Meanwhile, Roche's chief executive said he has been informed that more cases of mpox infection have occurred in Europe than previously reported and that the Swiss group could quickly offer 10 times more test kits than are currently in demand.
"It seems like there are more mpox cases already in Europe, maybe not all of them are in the media yet," CEO Thomas Schinecker said.
Schinecker pointed to the detection of the first case of the new mpox variant reported by Germany yesterday.
Germany's Robert Koch Institute for public health said the risk to the wider population was low.
Schinecker said that demand for Roche's mpox test kits was "not so high yet, but we could manage 10 times higher demand".
In the event of a pandemic situation with a much faster spread of the virus, Roche would require six to nine months to boost diagnostic production further, the CEO added.
The World Health Organization in August declared the new form of the virus a global health emergency after an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo spread to neighbouring countries.
The first sign of the spread outside of Africa was on August 15, when global health officials confirmed an infection with a new strain of the mpox virus in Sweden.
