The British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has significantly increased its sales thanks to corona vaccines and a large acquisition and is pleased with the stock market with higher profits.

In the fourth quarter, sales shot up by almost two-thirds compared to the same quarter last year.

At $12 billion, it was $1 billion above analysts' expectations.

Annual sales grew 40 percent in 2021 to $37.4 billion.

AstraZeneca has increased its dividend.

The share price rose by around 4 percent on Thursday after the figures were presented.

In the past twelve months, the stock market value has increased by around 20 percent.

Philip Pickert

Business correspondent based in London.

  • Follow I follow

CEO Pascal Soriot said Thursday: "AstraZeneca continued on its strong growth trajectory in 2021, with industry-leading research productivity and five blockbuster drugs and the purchase of Alexion."

The $39 billion acquisition of US biotech company Alexion is now fully complete and has contributed to strong sales growth.

In the fourth quarter, Astra's cancer drugs Tagrisso and Lynparza and Alexion's rare disease drug Soliris each contributed $1 billion to sales.

$4 billion vaccine sales

AstraZeneca became known last year above all for its corona vaccine, which was initially celebrated in Great Britain but is now hardly accepted in Europe.

Reports of side effects such as rare blood clots and diminishing effectiveness have severely damaged its reputation.

In the EU, just over 60 million people have received AstraZeneca's vaccine.

On the island, about half of the population was vaccinated twice with the AZ vaccine, but only about 50,000 people took this vaccine for the third vaccination.

AstraZeneca produced the vaccine developed in Oxford as a "non-profit" project and until recently sold it at practically cost price, making it significantly cheaper than the vaccines from Biontech/Pfizer or Moderna.

AstraZeneca has about $4 billion in sales for its Covid vaccine, while Pfizer recently reported $37 billion in sales of its Covid vaccine.

The AZ vaccine continues to be used in very large quantities in developing and emerging countries such as India.

A total of 2.5 billion doses have been shipped.

Soriot said: "We have kept our promise to provide broad and equal access to our Covid 19 vaccination." In future contracts, AstraZeneca wants to make a "moderate" profit from vaccine production, Soriot said months ago.