AstraZeneca banks on cancer and cuts

AstraZeneca reported a sharper rise in quarterly profit and, in the same breath, set itself a large cost-cutting task: find $1.5 billion in annual savings and feed that money back into the drugs it hopes will define the company’s next decade.

The British pharmaceutical group said profit after tax for the July-to-September period reached $3.12 billion, up 23%, while revenue rose 7% to $16.2 billion. The strongest push came from oncology, still the center of gravity in the business. Cancer medicines made up 48% of total sales, with revenue in that division rising 17% to $7.8 billion, led by Tagrisso and Imfinzi.

The numbers matter beyond a good quarter. They show how much AstraZeneca is relying on newer, higher-growth treatments to outrun the drag from older medicines losing exclusivity and from pricing pressure in major markets. Farxiga, used for diabetes and heart and kidney disease, saw sales fall 25% to $1.6 billion after generic competition reached the United States. Brilinta has also lost patent protection. In China, the company said state bulk procurement continues to push prices lower.

That makes the restructuring plan less a side note than a statement about where the company thinks its future is. AstraZeneca said the savings program, called “Reshaping for Sustainable Growth,” would be largely completed by the end of 2029 and would cost as much as $2 billion in one-off restructuring charges. It said the savings would be reinvested mainly in its pipeline, with resources shifted across the existing business to support more than 180 projects in development.

There is an old pharmaceutical promise inside that language: cut now, discover later. Investors usually hear discipline; employees often hear uncertainty. AstraZeneca did not announce job losses, but “redeploy resources” in a restructuring plan of this size is not neutral phrasing. What the company has established is the target and the charge it is willing to take to get there. What remains unstated is where the cuts will fall, and how much of the saving will come from labour rather than from procurement, manufacturing or other overhead.

The company also reaffirmed its outlook for 2026, saying it still expects revenue to grow by a mid-to-high single-digit percentage and core earnings per share by a low double-digit percentage, excluding currency effects. Core earnings per share rose 17% in the quarter to $2.79.

Chief executive Pascal Soriot said AstraZeneca remained on track for its 2030 ambitions. The company is aiming for $80 billion in annual revenue by that point, up from almost $59 billion in 2025, with about half expected to come from the US market. It has also been investing heavily in China, even as pricing pressure there weighs on returns.

For patients, this kind of earnings report can feel remote until it becomes a question of which medicines get developed, tested and launched. AstraZeneca said it has logged 12 positive late-stage trial readouts this year and is working on a weight-loss treatment as well. But trial success is not approval, and a broad pipeline is not a guarantee that every bet will survive.

The quarter was good. The harder part is visible in the same document: AstraZeneca needs its cancer franchise and experimental pipeline to grow fast enough to pay for the medicines getting cheaper.