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When AstraZeneca chief Pascal Soriot said the drugmaker would make $80bn in revenue by 2030, his goal seemed wildly ambitious. It would, after all, entail doubling sales over six years. A year and a half down the line, the £225bn UK group is within sight of its target.
This week, AstraZeneca reported that its product revenue grew 10 per cent in 2025, taking sales to nearly $59bn. On top of its existing drugs, the oncology, rare disease and biopharmaceuticals company had 16 positive trial results last year for drugs which together could generate up to $10bn of annual sales. It expects to squeeze at least nine more blockbuster drugs, each with sales of at least $1bn a year, from its pipeline by 2030 on top of the 16 it currently has.
Add that all up, and it isn’t hard to see AstraZeneca indeed making $80bn a few years from now. Analysts polled by S&P Capital IQ reckon it will slightly exceed its target. That sort of expansion is rare, outside of obesity-fuelled growth stories at Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. For comparison, analysts expect British peer GSK’s revenue to rise from $40bn in 2024 to only $51bn by the end of the decade.
So how did AstraZeneca pull it off? By being better than average at discovering new medicines. Over the four years to 2020, the industry’s average probability of taking a drug from a pre-clinical stage to phase 3 development was about 8 per cent, while AstraZeneca’s was 22 per cent, based on its own analysis. AstraZeneca has delivered returns on its R&D investment above its cost of capital for every drug cohort since 2012, analysts at Berenberg reckon.
Investors have taken notice. AstraZeneca is a sector darling trading at a premium. Its forward price-to-earnings multiple of 19 compares with about 16 for the broader European pharma index, according to S&P Capital IQ.
From 2030 onwards, the company looks less exposed to the dreaded patent cliff than many of its peers. True, some key products will lose exclusivity, some as early as this year, including diabetes drug Farxiga, which generated $8.4bn in sales last year. But AstraZeneca has two advantages. Its R&D pipeline contains 300 drugs in trials. And its net debt is just 1.2 times its ebitda, giving it ample capacity to buy growth if needed.
Given the staggered nature of its patent expiries, AstraZeneca is likely to go for smaller, bolt-on deals. That’s a less risky proposition than the large, defensive bids some peers have made to fill looming gaps, such as Novo’s dash for Metsera. Pharma companies can create value by scooping up medicines discovered elsewhere. But getting one’s labs to do the hard work, as AstraZeneca has done, is a more durable recipe for success.