By Helena Smolak

Roche Holding expects sales and core earnings to keep growing this year after beating analysts' expectations for 2024.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant is forecasting sales growth in the mid-single-digit range at constant exchange rates in 2025, and core earnings-per-share growth in the high-single-digit range.

Chief Executive Thomas Schinecker said in a call with reporters that Roche remained committed to keeping its research-and-development spending broadly flat in 2025.

However, he said the company expects the new U.S. administration under President Trump to encourage more investments in the country, a development he anticipates will benefit Roche.

Roche is betting on seven key late-stage trial readouts this year, but investors have questioned the company's R&D due to high-profile trial failures in recent years for Alzheimer's disease and lung cancer.

Many of the 2025 late-stage trials are considered high-risk among analysts and industry watchers.

The company is also battling with patent losses for cancer drugs Avastin and Herceptin, lung-disease treatment Esbriet, rheumatoid-arthritis treatment Actemra and eye drug Lucentis. Schinecker said Roche is expecting a hit of around 1.2 billion Swiss francs ($1.32 billion) in biosimilars in line with last year, which he said was "very much digestible."

Sales rose 3% last year to 60.50 billion Swiss francs. Adjusting for currency movements, sales were up 7%, with growth in both its pharmaceuticals and diagnostics divisions at constant currencies. Analysts had forecast sales of 60.41 billion Swiss francs, according to consensus estimates by Visible Alpha.

High demand for Roche's hemophilia injection Hemlibra, multiple-sclerosis treatment Ocrevus, cancer drug Phesgo and eye treatment Vabysmo lifted pharma sales, while Roche's diagnostics business benefited from increased sales in immunodiagnostic products and clinical chemistry tests.

Core earnings per share--Roche's preferred measure of profitability-rose to 18.80 Swiss francs from 18.57 Swiss francs. Analysts had expected core earnings per share of 18.59 Swiss francs.

Net profit for the year fell to 9.19 billion Swiss francs from 12.36 billion Swiss francs, mainly due to impairment charges of 3.2 billion Swiss francs related to Flatiron Health and Spark Therapeutics.

The company said its board would propose a dividend of 9.70 Swiss francs for 2024, above 9.60 Swiss francs for 2023. Roche said it expects to further increase its dividend.

Write to Helena Smolak at helena.smolak@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 30, 2025 04:21 ET (09:21 GMT)

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