Roche's sales up 12% for the nine months to September, buoyed by cancer drugs

Swiss drug major Roche says that a 14% increase in pharmaceutical sales, to 27.12 billion Swiss francs ($22.9 billion) for the first nine months of 2007, helped group revenues reach 33.95 billion francs, up 12% on the comparable period in 2006. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had predicted turnover of 34.22 billion francs.

The company, which only reports profit figures for the half and full year, remained upbeat, however, commenting that the improvement was despite a third-quarter drop in turnover from Tamiflu (oseltamivir), which fell more than 400.0 million francs to 257.0 million francs on the year-earlier three months, following the completion of outstanding pandemic stockpile orders.

Cancer drug sales climb 21%