The board of directors also calculates with less sales and profits for 2023 due to a decreasing Corona tailwind, as the company announced on Thursday in Rahway. Investors and analysts were disappointed with the outlook.
The industry experts had already prepared for a similarly high drop in sales for 2023; However, they had previously assumed that profits would not melt away as significantly as Merck & Co now fears.
However, in initial reactions to the figures, some experts also pointed out that the estimates on the market may not have included certain special charges that the group had previously communicated. This involves one-off effects in connection with the takeover of the cancer specialist Imago announced in November and payments to Kelun-Biotech as part of a license agreement.
Analyst Louise Chen spoke of a mixed forecast, but the year 2022 and the outlook showed the strength of Merck & Co in the actual business. She also referred to several hopefuls in the research pipeline, which could ultimately provide clarity about the further business development of the pharmaceutical manufacturer beyond the current decade.
For the time being, however, Merck, like its domestic competitor Pfizer, has to deal with the effects of the decreasing corona tailwind. According to its own calculations, the most important sales driver in the pandemic, the Corona tablet Lagevrio, is likely to bring only one billion dollars into the coffers of the group in the current year. Compared to the almost $5.7 billion in sales in 2022, these are significant losses.
Pfizer had already disappointed the stock market this week, the group expects sales from its corona vaccine and the COVID drug Paxlovid to hit a low point this year, before things should pick up again.
At Merck & Co, too, Lagevrio accounted for a large part of the sales growth last year – however, sales in the entire second half of the year did not even account for half of the first quarter, which was still heavily overshadowed by the pandemic. Group-wide, sales rose by 22 percent to almost 59.3 billion US dollars in the reporting period, driven by blockbusters such as the cancer drug Keytruda and the HPV vaccine Gardasil. Bottom line, profits climbed 18 percent to $14.5 billion in the twelve months from January to December.
For 2023, the management around company boss Robert Davis is now calculating with group revenues in the range of 57.2 to 58.7 billion US dollars. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) are expected to fall to between $6.80 and $6.95 after rising 39 percent year-on-year to $7.48 in 2022. However, Merck estimates 53 US cents as a special charge for Imago and Kelun-Biotech alone.
Merck & Co shares on the NYSE temporarily fell by 2.87 percent to $103.91.
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