Japan’s Takeda says 9-month profit skids 13%, but keeps annual guidance

JAPAN’S Takeda Pharmaceutical kept its profit outlook for the fiscal year unchanged despite posting a 13 per cent drop in operating earnings for the nine months ended December, as the country’s largest drugmaker aims to boost its drug pipeline.

For the first three quarters of the year, operating profit slid to 401.9 billion yen (S$4.1 billion). Still, Takeda held its annual operating profit forecast at 530 billion yen, below a Refinitiv analysts’ consensus forecast of 593.9 billion yen.

European Union regulators in December approved Takeda’s vaccine for dengue fever, branded as QDENGA. The vaccine was earlier approved in Indonesia, while US regulators are reviewing it on a priority basis.

Takeda expects the vaccine to generate US$700 million to US$1.6 billion in sales over the course of several years.

Also in December, the company agreed to buy an experimental psoriasis drug from US-based Nimbus Therapeutics for as much as US$6 billion, demonstrating its willingness to spend big to shore up its pipeline as mainstay products lose patent protection.

Until that deal, Takeda had been aggressively cutting debt and selling off non-core assets following its US$59 billion takeover of Shire in 2019.

“Our robust cash flow and strong financial position enabled us to make substantive progress in deleveraging even as we continued to invest for growth,” Takeda said in a statement, adding its net debt to core earnings ratio has improved to 2.5 times as of the end of the third quarter. REUTERS