AZNCF - AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-07-25 12:25:12 ET
AstraZeneca PLC (AZN)
Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call
July 25, 2024, 06:45 ET
Company Participants
Andy Barnett - Head, IR
Pascal Soriot - Executive Director & CEO
Aradhana Sarin - Executive Director & CFO
David Fredrickson - EVP, Oncology Business
Susan Galbraith - EVP, Oncology Research and Development
Ruud Dobber - EVP & President, BioPharmaceuticals
Sharon Barr - EVP, BioPharmaceuticals Research and Development
Marc Dunoyer - CEO, Alexion and Chief Strategy Officer, AstraZeneca
Dave Fredrickson - EVP, Oncology Business
Leon Wang - EVP, International and President, China
Conference Call Participants
Mark Purcell - Morgan Stanley
James Gordon - JPMorgan
Gonzalo Artiach - Danske Bank
Rajan Sharma - Goldman Sachs
Sachin Jain - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Tim Anderson - Wolfe
Emmanuel Papadakis - Deutsche Bank
Peter Welford - Jefferies
Seamus Fernandez - Analyst
Matthew Weston - UBS
Mattias Haggblom - Handelsbanken
Pete Verdult - Citi
Luisa Hector - Berenberg Capital Markets
Presentation
Operator
Welcome to AstraZeneca's Half Year and Q2 Results 2024 Webinar for Investors and Analysts.
Before I hand over to AstraZeneca, I'd like to read the safe harbor statement. The company intends to utilize the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Participants on this call may make forward-looking statements with respect to the operations and financial performance of AstraZeneca. Although we believe our expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, by their very nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and may be influenced by factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.
Any forward-looking statements made on this call reflect the knowledge and information available at the time of this call. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Please also carefully review the forward-looking statements disclaimer in the slide deck that accompanies this presentation. [Operator instructions] And with that, I would now like to hand the conference over to the company.
Andy Barnett
A warm welcome to AstraZeneca's half-year and second-quarter 2024 presentation conference call and webcast for investors and analysts. I'm Andy Barnett, head of investor relations. And before I hand over to Pascal and other members of our executive team, I would like to cover some important housekeeping points. Firstly, all the materials presented today as additional and additional resources including updated epidemiology tables and our recent Investor Day materials are available on our Investor Relations website.
This slide contains our safe harbor statement, which I'd encourage you to take time to read we will be making comments on our performance using constant exchange rates, or CER, core financial numbers, and other non-GAAP measures. A non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliation is contained within the results announcement and all numbers quoted are in millions of U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. This slide shows the agenda for today's call.
And following our prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions. We will try and address as many questions as we can during the allotted time, although I did ask the participants to limit the number of questions you ask to allow others a fair chance to participate in the Q&A. And with that, Pascal, I'll hand the floor over to you.
Pascal Soriot
Thank you very much, Andy. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. In the first half of the year, total revenue grew by 18%, driven predominantly by strong underlying demand for our medicines across key therapy areas and geographies. We recorded a record second quarter with almost $13 billion of revenue.
Core operating profit increased to $8.4 billion, while core EPS increased 5% to $4.03. On both measures, it is important to recall that in the first half of 2023, the company benefited from onetime -- other core operating income totaling $1.1 billion. Adjusting for other operating income, growth in core operating profit and core EPS in the first half would have been higher. And this shows that we continue to work on leverage with faster operating margin growth and revenue.
With the strength of our underlying business, I'm pleased to announce we've upgraded our full year guidance we now expect both total revenue and core EPS to increase by mid-teens percentages. It is a strong upgrade. They rely on our underlying -- the underlying strength of our business. Collaborative revenue, as you've not probably noted, are not growing.
Aradhana will provide you with additional detail shortly in our prepared remarks. Please move to the next slide. Taking a closer look at our total revenue performance in the first half, we continued to benefit from our diverse broad-based business. We delivered double-digit growth in the U.S., in Europe, in emerging markets, ex China, and in China, we delivered a growth of 15%, nearly 30% ex China....
AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript