Shares of drugmaker Novartis rose 4.4% as sales guidance for the blockbuster drug rose

Novartis signage on a building at the company’s headquarters campus in Basel, Switzerland, Monday, Jan. 8, 2023.

Bloomberg

The stock of the Swiss drug maker Novartis In early trading on Tuesday, the company raised its full-year guidance due to better-than-expected results and its stock price rose 4.8%. First quarter results.

The stock gave back its gains slightly and was up 4.6% at 8:50 a.m. London time.

Novartis’ net sales rose 11% in the first three months of the year, while core operating income rose 22% in the same period.

Chief executive Vas Narasimhan said all its major brands saw solid growth, including blockbuster heart failure drug Entesto and psoriasis drug Cosentyx.

“Our results were broad-based across all key growth brands and geographies, allowing us to raise our full-year guidance to 2024,” he said in a statement.

The company said it now expects net sales to grow by a high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage in 2024, up from previous guidance of mid-single-digit growth.

The drugmaker also revised its guidance for core operating income, now expecting double-digit to mid-single-digit percentage growth, up from high-single-digit growth forecasts.

Narasimhan said the company continued to advance its drug pipeline in the first quarter, including treatments for prostate cancer and leukemia.

“The momentum in our business and pipeline gives us confidence in our mid- to long-term growth prospects,” he said.