In the third quarter, the growth of major global big pharma’s oncology business unit was somewhat sluggish compared to the first half.
Among them, MSD achieved sales exceeding KRW 5 trillion with Keytruda alone, overwhelming the total sales of other companies’ oncology business units. Its 9-month cumulative sales have already surpassed KRW 15 trillion and are expected to reach KRW 20 trillion a year.
Newsmp tallied the third-quarter reports of the oncology business unit of global big pharmaceutical companies and found that the cumulative sales of 8 out of 9 companies for nine months increased by more than 10% YoY.
However, the number of companies with a sales growth rate of more than 10% decreased sharply to five companies, and only MSD’s third-quarter sales growth rate exceeded the cumulative sales growth rate of nine months.
Among them, GSK, which is growing its anticancer drug business with Zejula, has just surpassed KRW 200 billion in quarterly sales, and the growth rate was 36.4% in the third quarter and 49.8% in 9 months, the highest among the nine companies.
MSD achieved sales of KRW 5.35 trillion and accumulated more than KRW 15 trillion in nine months, with Keytruda alone overwhelming the overall sales of other companies’ oncology business units.
None of the remaining eight big global pharmaceutical companies, which counted sales by the unit in the quarterly reports, exceeded the sales volume of Keytruda alone in the total sales of the oncology business unit.
In addition to Keytruda, MSD’s oncology business unit achieved sales of about KRW 5.86 trillion in the third quarter and KRW 16.31 trillion in nine months, with sales of Lynparza and Lenvima, which are collaborating with AstraZeneca and Eisai. This is an increase of more than 20% YoY.
For nine months, following MSD, cumulative sales of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen)’s oncology business unit increased 20.6%, with Lilly 19.7%, AstraZeneca 17.2%, Pfizer 15.9%, Sanofi 14.9%, and AbbVie 10.1%.
Novartis’ oncology business unit had cumulative sales of KRW 13.7 trillion for nine months, the second-highest among these companies after MSD, but its growth remained in a single digit.
Following Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer exceeded KRW 10 trillion, and all of them achieved a growth rate of over 15%.
For the third quarter, the growth of the remaining eight companies, excluding MSD, decreased. In particular, Lilly’s growth was only 3.7%, while Sanofi and AbbVie left in single digits.
Novartis, which was the only company among the nine companies that recorded single-digit sales growth for nine months in the cancer drug division, also recorded 5.6% growth in the third quarter, less than the nine-month mark.
AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer also saw their growth rate fall below the nine-month mark in the third quarter but remained double-digit.
In particular, all four of the big pharma with cumulative sales of more than KRW 10 trillion in the third quarter of the oncology business unit, excluding Novartis, recorded double-digit growth.
