Dive Brief:

• Roche on Thursday faced more questions about its long-term prospects even as it reaffirmed its outlook for the year and posted quarterly results that beat analyst expectations.
• Group sales at the diagnostics and drugmaker rose 7% to 16.1 billion Swiss francs, or about $19.6 billion, in the third quarter. That beat the consensus estimate of 15.8 billion francs, Jefferies analyst Michael Leuchten wrote in a note to clients. But Roche benefited from the implementation of a new resource planning system that boosted revenue, he noted.
• Third-quarter sales were “cosmetically ahead,” but the underlying numbers “would seem to be a miss,” Leuchten wrote. The results, along with the fact that Roche didn’t raise its guidance for the year, “should raise some questions about the growth trajectory into 2027,” he added. Roche expects group sales growth in the “mid single digit range” for this year.

Dive Insight:

Roche is racing to beef up its pipeline amid an onslaught of threats to top-selling products set to lose market exclusivity. Investors got a taste of that looming competition in the third-quarter report; sales of the allergy and asthma drug Xolair only reached 848 million francs in the period, compared with analyst estimates for well over 900 million francs. Leuchten had forecast revenue of 972 million francs.

A copycat version of Xolair launched this month in the U.S. Meanwhile, top sellers Ocrevus and Tecentriq are set to face generic competition by 2030, with Hemlibra following in the early part of the next decade. Together, those drugs represented four of Roche’s five best sellers in the third quarter.

Roche has been trying to reassure investors that it has answers for the impending declines in sales. Chief among them is a breast cancer pill called giredestrant that executives say could become the company’s new best seller, though it would enter a crowded field. Roche expects an approval decision from the Food and Drug Administration by Dec. 18.

The Swiss drugmaker has also poured billions of dollars into obesity drug research and said those products along with giredestrant could generate $9 billion in combined peak annual sales. But it may be hard for Roche to carve out a place in a market dominated by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Meanwhile, questions surround an experimental multiple sclerosis therapy that, like giredestrant, is awaiting an answer from the FDA.

Like other drugmakers, Roche has also looked to China as a source of new experimental medications and become especially active in that market. The company has signed six Chinese licensing deals just in the last two months and a total of 11 since the start of 2025, according to BioPharma Dive data.