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AstraZeneca 3Q soars
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October 28, 1999: 8:23 a.m. ET
Pretax earnings jump 54% at drug firm, U.S. agri-business still troubled
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Anglo-Swedish drug firm AstraZeneca reported strong third-quarter earnings Thursday, posting a 54 percent jump in underlying pretax profit to $941 million.
The market had anticipated strong results and the shares rose 1.8 percent in London, to 2,799 pence, and Stockholm, to 377 Swedish krone.
Pretax earnings, including discontinued operations and one-time items, were less impressive, rising just 9 percent to $723 million.
Revenue jumped 22 percent to $4.3 billion in the third quarter, buoyed by a 29 percent jump rise in healthcare revenue. Operating profit, on a continuing basis and before one-time items, jumped 50 percent to $949 million, boosted by a 56 percent jump in operating profit in the healthcare division to $958 million.
Continuing problems at the struggling U.S.-based agro-chemicals unit weighed on the results as operating profit slumped 27 percent on an underlying basis during the first nine months of this year.
The company is currently restructuring the unit and promised it would announce its plans for the division at the full year. The company is likely to seek a buyer.
U.S. healthcare sales were particularly strong as they jumped 57 percent. The company said this was in large part due to a more even distribution of sales of its highly-successful anti-ulcer drug Prilosec over the year compared to 1998.
On a nine-month basis, pretax profit jumped 18 percent to $3 billion, as sales rose 15 percent to $13.3 billion. Earnings per share rose 18 percent to $1.18. Healthcare sales were up 20 percent from a year earlier at $11.1 billion.
AstraZeneca was formed from a merger between Britain's Zeneca and Sweden's Astra, which was completed in April. 
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AstraZeneca
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