AZN Astrazeneca Plc

By Ian Walker and Joe Hoppe

AstraZeneca PLC on Friday reported a swing to a second-quarter net loss after booking a large foreign-exchange charge in its accounts, but raised its full-year revenue guidance, and said it has named a new chairman-designate.

The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant said it now expects to report a low-20s percentage rise in total revenue for the year, up from previous guidance of a high-teens percentage. This was due to strong overall performance and better-than-anticipated Covid-19 medicine revenue, which is now expected to be flat compared with 2021. The company had previously guided for a low-to-mid-20s percentage fall.

AstraZeneca posted a net loss of $372 million for the quarter, compared with a net profit of $1.19 billion a year earlier.

Revenue rose to $10.77 billion, from $8.22 billion, with growth coming from all disease areas and from the addition of the Alexion acquisition, completed in July 2021. Revenue consensus was $10.45 billion.

The company also said it has appointed Michel Demare as the new chairman-designate, succeeding nonexecutive Chairman Leif Johansson after his retirement in April 2023.

Core earnings per share--one of the company's preferred metrics--rose to $1.72 in the quarter, compared with $0.90 a year earlier and a consensus of $1.57.

Consensus figures have been taken from FactSet and are based on 16 analysts' projections.

AstraZeneca reiterated that it expects core EPS growth in the mid-to-high-20s percentage.

The board has increased its interim dividend to $0.93 a share, compared with $0.90 for the first half of 2021, and said it still intends to raise the total dividend for the year to $2.90.

Write to Ian Walker at ian.walker@wsj.com and Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 29, 2022 03:43 ET (07:43 GMT)

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