Glaxo Ditches Raft of R&D Projects to Focus on Best Prospects -- Update

By Denise Roland 

LONDON-- GlaxoSmithKline PLC axed more than 30 drug-research projects to focus on four key disease areas, in a push by new Chief Executive Emma Walmsley to sharpen the company's research-and-development operations.

U.K.-based Glaxo said Wednesday it would now focus its research on respiratory diseases, HIV and other infectious diseases, cancer and immuno-inflammatory conditions.

The company plans to pour more investment into 16 drug candidates that it believes stand the best chance of becoming big sellers, while shelving 13 drug-development programs and around 20 early-stage research projects.

Glaxo's low research productivity is viewed as a fundamental problem by investors, who have been stung by some high-profile failures in recent years.

Ms. Walmsley said Glaxo has spread its bets too thinly, hurting its competitive edge, but said research investment would stay roughly the same overall.

In making such a move just months into her tenure, Glaxo's new boss is addressing a key investor concern: her lack of experience in managing a pharmaceutical pipeline.

Ms. Walmsley, who became CEO on April 1, previously ran the company's consumer health-care arm, which sells drugstore staples like over-the-counter painkillers and toothpaste. Before joining Glaxo, she had spent most of her career at French cosmetics company L'Oreal SA.

The announcement came as Glaxo reported second-quarter earnings.

Despite the strategic shift, the company made no change to its long-term outlook. It maintained that annual sales growth would come in at a low- to mid-single-digit percentage on average, to 2020. It said adjusted earnings per share would expand at a mid-to-high single digit percentage annually, on average, in the same period.

Glaxo shares were trading down 1.4% at GBP15.64 on Wednesday afternoon.

It also cut its full-year guidance after spending GBP130 million ($169 million) on a priority review voucher, which grants it a six-month review process from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, instead of the standard 10 months. Glaxo bought the voucher from an unnamed drugmaker in the second quarter, and has used it to speed the agency's review of the company's new two-drug HIV regimen.

Priority review vouchers are awarded by the FDA to incentivize the development of drugs for neglected diseases. But a secondary market has sprung up where the original awardee can sell the voucher to others at prices that can reach several hundreds of millions of dollars.

The steep cost of the voucher contributed to Glaxo posting a net loss of GBP180 million in the quarter. That compared with a GBP435 million loss a year earlier, when the company took a GBP1.8 billion write-down after a sharp decline in the value of the pound following the U.K.'s Brexit vote increased the value of its liabilities.

The drugmaker said revenue increased 12% to GBP7.32 billion. Analysts had expected a net profit of GBP1.14 billion and revenue of GBP7.27 billion. Adjusted operating profit, a measure that strips out one-time items, rose 14% to GBP2.08 billion, beating analyst estimates of GBP2.02 billion.

Glaxo, which reports results in sterling but makes most of its revenue in other currencies, is benefiting from the weakness of the pound. Stripping out the currency effect, adjusted operating profit was flat and revenue was up 3%.

Write to Denise Roland at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 26, 2017 09:29 ET (13:29 GMT)

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