AstraZeneca disclosed its financial report for the first three quarters of 2024 on November 12. The company's revenue was 39.182 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 19%; of which product revenue was 37.576 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 19%. AstraZeneca raised its full-year performance guidance for 2024 in the announcement, and it is expected that both full-year revenue and core earnings per share will achieve high-ten-digit percentage growth, which was previously expected to be in the mid-ten digits.

From the perspective of regional distribution, the Chinese market has undoubtedly become an important engine for AstraZeneca's performance growth. In the first three quarters of 2024, AstraZeneca's revenue in China reached more than 5 billion US dollars (equivalent to more than 35 billion yuan in RMB), accounting for about 13% of its global market share, becoming an important part of AstraZeneca's global business. Many people may have no idea that AstraZeneca created 35 billion yuan in revenue in the first nine months. We can compare it with the market value leader of the domestic pharmaceutical industry, "Hengrui Medicine". According to public information, Hengrui's revenue in the first three quarters of 2024 was 20.189 billion yuan (including the cumulative BD revenue of about 1.25 billion yuan), which means that Hengrui's domestic revenue in the first three quarters is still nearly 15 billion yuan away from AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca's revenue in China in the first three quarters was 35 billion yuan, an increase of 15% year-on-year (as you can see, this figure far exceeds China's GDP growth rate), which also made AstraZeneca surpass Merck again to become the first multinational pharmaceutical company in China in terms of revenue. According to this growth rate, AstraZeneca's revenue in China in 2024 may exceed 6.5 billion US dollars (more than 40 billion yuan). Although in the pharmaceutical industry, many people say that it is a capital winter, or an industry winter.

But AstraZeneca's "explosive" performance seems to be telling another story. Let's look at the growth of AstraZeneca's main products. Among them, the oncology business undoubtedly contributed nearly half of the revenue. The highly anticipated third-generation EGFR inhibitor osimertinib (trade name: Tagrisso, Tagrisso) sold $4.877 billion; the PD-1 drug durvalumab (trade name: Imfinzi, Yingfeifan) sold $3.463 billion; the BTK inhibitor acalabrutinib (trade name: Calquence, Kangkeqi) sold $2.321 billion; the HER-2 ADC drug detrastuzumab (trade name: Enhertu, Youhede) sold $1.442 billion.

In the field of chronic diseases, AstraZeneca's SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin (trade name: Farxiga, Andatang) sold $5.779 billion; it is worth mentioning that dapagliflozin is the hypoglycemic drug that participated in the national medical insurance negotiations in 2019 and became a hot topic due to "soul bargaining". This shows to a certain extent that this drug has gained a great deal of volume after entering the national medical insurance catalog.

In addition, in the respiratory field, AstraZeneca's nebulizer budesonide/formoterol (trade name: Symbicort) sold $2.195 billion; the injectable asthma IL-5Rα monoclonal antibody benralizumab (trade name: Fasenra) sold $1.218 billion. Behind the high performance are high targets and high incentives. In order to achieve the goals set by the board of directors of AstraZeneca's UK headquarters, many AstraZeneca employees took risks and were suspected of illegal cases such as insurance fraud, illegal import of drugs and stealing private data. These incidents undoubtedly had a certain impact on AstraZeneca's brand image and market trust. AstraZeneca also emphasized this point in the Q3 report, and "China" was mentioned 23 times in the entire Q3 financial report. However, in AstraZeneca's view, although the person under investigation is its China President and Global VP Wang Lei, this is only a personal behavior and individual business. The company is still operating normally and will fully cooperate with the investigation of relevant departments.

In short, AstraZeneca's performance in the Chinese market is remarkable.

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