By Cecilia Butini
British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC on Wednesday posted an increase in net profit and sales for the final quarter of 2021.
The company said net profit was 749 million pounds ($1.01 billion) for the fourth quarter, up from GBP677 million for the same period the previous year, on sales that grew to GBP9.53 billion from GBP8.74 billion.
While sales beat expectations, net profit came short of a company-provided consensus, which saw the metric at GBP1.19 billion.
Earnings per share grew to 14.7 pence from 13.6 pence, while adjusted earnings per share–a closely-watched metric that strips off some one-off items–came to 25.6 pence, beating consensus expectations of 23.8 pence.
The company declared a dividend of 23 pence for the fourth quarter and of 80 pence for 2021, in line with what the company had previously said.
Glaxo said it expects to deliver sales growth in 2022 of between 5% to 7% at constant exchange rates. Adjusted operating profit is expected to grow between 12% and 14% at constant exchange rates during the year, including some anticipated benefit in royalty income from the Gilead settlement.
Glaxo said it continues to expect the demerger of its consumer healthcare business to happen in mid-2022.
Write to Cecilia Butini at cecilia.butini@wsj.com
This article was originally published by Marketwatch.com. Read the original article here.
