Roche reported falling sales in the first three months of the year, as the strength of the Swiss franc and generic competition for some of its older drugs weighed on the drugmaker.
First-quarter sales came in at 14.7 billion Swiss francs ($18.7 billion), down 5% year-on-year — but up 6% on a constant currency basis.
The appreciation of the Swiss franc against most currencies, notably the U.S. dollar, had a significant impact on the results reported in Swiss francs compared to constant exchange rates, Roche said.
The Swiss franc fell 12% against the U.S. dollar in 2025 and is down another 1% so far this year.
CEO Thomas Schinecker defended the company’s quarterly results, saying it’s a “question on how you look at the reporting,” and that while the Swiss franc appreciates, sales reported in U.S. dollars increased by 9%.
“We spend most of our money in the U.S., and we have most our debt in the U.S., we’ve just recently bought another company in the U.S.,” he told Squawk Box Europe.
“We will continue to invest in the U.S., and we don’t see that as a major issue.”
Shares rose 3% on Thursday, adding to a 12-month gain of 18%.
European pharma stocks performance over the past 12 months.
Roche, through its U.S. subsidiary Genentech, is among the pharma companies that last year inked a deal with the Trump administration to lower the price of their drugs for Americans.
In exchange, the companies agreed to a three-year grace period during which their products won’t face Trump’s planned pharmaceutical-specific tariffs — on the condition that the drugmakers further invest in U.S. manufacturing.
In April last year, Roche said it would invest $50 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, creating 1,000 jobs with the company and an additional 11,000 jobs to support new U.S. manufacturing capabilities.
The obesity gamble
It comes as pharmaceutical giants are under pressure as the sector faces a looming loss of exclusivities by the end of the decade, when older medicines will start facing generic competition.
Like many of its peers, Roche is looking to acquisitions to boost future sales, as well as developing medicines in-house.
Results so far have been mixed. On Wednesday, it said an experimental pill to treat multiple sclerosis roughly halved the number of relapses in two late-stage trials. However, safety concerns remained as more patients died when taking the medicines than in the group receiving a placebo.
Roche is planning to submit the drug for approval to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by mid-year, and Barclays analysts said they see a “risk to the upside” despite safety concerns.
Roche is also betting heavily on a future entry into the lucrative weight-loss market, with a target of becoming a top-three player with its experimental drug CT-388, alongside Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which currently dominate the market.
CEO Schinecker told Germany’s Handelsblatt last month that Roche is aiming for a double-digit market share in weight loss.
The weight loss market is still in its early days, Schinecker said. “If you look at how many percent of people actually use these medicines, it’s still a quite small percentage, so there’s still a lot of opportunity to help people dealing with the weight,” he said, also flagging the wider health benefits from GLP-1 medicines beyond losing weight, even at low doses.
In the U.S., Roche’s most important market, sales grew 5% in constant exchange rates, driven by growth of asthma medicine Xolair and continuing uptake of hemophilia drug Hemlibra and blood cancer treatment Polivy.
Demand was strong in both its pharmaceutical and diagnostics divisions, which grew 7% and 3%, respectively, the company said.
It maintained its full-year guidance, targeting a mid-single-digit sales growth in 2026. It expects core earnings per share in the high single-digit range at constant exchange rates.