AstraZeneca expects ‘minimal’ sales of Covid vaccine this year

Drugs giant AstraZeneca thinks that this year it will only sell a small amount of the Covid-19 vaccine which shot the company into the limelight during the pandemic.
By Greg Wright
Published 9th Feb 2023, 11:29 BST

The Cambridge-based business said it expects revenue from the vaccine, now called Vaxzevria, to hit “minimal” levels.

It follows a 94 per cent drop in Vaxzevria sales in the last quarter of 2022.

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A year earlier the business sold 1.8bn US dollars’ (£1.5bn) worth of Vaxzevria, but in the final three months of last year it sold just 95 million dollars’ (£78.7m) worth.

Library image of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) walking with warehouse supervisor Laurence Wilkinson, during a tour of the manufacturing facility for the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine at Oxford Biomedica in Oxfordshire. Picture date: Monday January 18, 2021.Library image of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) walking with warehouse supervisor Laurence Wilkinson, during a tour of the manufacturing facility for the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine at Oxford Biomedica in Oxfordshire. Picture date: Monday January 18, 2021.
Library image of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) walking with warehouse supervisor Laurence Wilkinson, during a tour of the manufacturing facility for the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine at Oxford Biomedica in Oxfordshire. Picture date: Monday January 18, 2021.

AstraZeneca said it expects sales of Covid-19 medicines – it has three others – to “decline significantly” this year, mainly driven by the vaccine.

The fall comes despite a big jump in sales of one of the Covid medications, Evusheld.

The drug helps prevent coronavirus and is recommended in the UK for people who cannot have vaccines, or who are unlikely to mount an immune response to a vaccination.

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Sales of the drug – which was approved in the UK in March last year – rose from 135m dollars (£111.8m) in the final quarter of 2021 to 734 million dollars (£608m) a year later.

AstraZeneca said revenue increased by 25 per cent to 44.4bn dollars (£36.8bn) when accounting for currency fluctuations. On an actual basis it rose 19 per cent

Revenue in the final quarter rose by just 1 per cent, due to the fall in Vaxzevria sales, it added. But the UK’s biggest company still swung back into profit last year. The business had lost 265 million dollars (£219.5 million) before tax in 2021; last year it made 2.5 billion dollars (£2.1 billion).

Related topics:AstraZenecaCambridge