Sanofi’s influenza business did gangbusters in Europe for the last three months of the year. Across the pond in the U.S., however, the shifting COVID-19 vaccination landscape fueled a meaty sales decline, the company said on a call with investors Friday.
Worldwide, Sanofi’s flu shot sales dipped 12.4% for the fourth quarter, generating roughly €1.09 billion (about $1.24 billion). U.S. flu sales for the period sunk 48.3%. Sanofi flagged two exacerbating factors in the U.S., where its flu shot sales also slipped 13.6% for the full year: First, COVID-19 boosters took priority in November and December, relegating flu shots to the sidelines, Thomas Triomphe, Sanofi’s vaccine chief, said on Friday’s call.
“The U.S. sales prediction has nothing to do with our product performance,” Triomphe noted. “COVID-19 boosters were given the priority by retailers and healthcare providers,” he explained. During the Q&A portion of the call, Triomphe noted that there was “a lot of confusion with different age indications being licensed at the same time and a lot of discussion on the boosters.” Those factors are unlikely to cause problems in 2022, he said.
Second, early vaccine shipments during the Northern Hemisphere’s flu season weighted sales toward the third quarter, Triomphe explained.
Thanks to the U.S.’ booster focus, the total number of U.S. flu doses injected this season dropped 17%, Triomphe said. Despite those challenges, Sanofi’s Fluzone HD gained 3.5 points of market share, he noted.
Elsewhere, flu sales grew substantially across the pond, with revenue increasing 51.1% in Europe and 22.7% in the rest of the world.
“I’m confident that our flu franchise will continue to grow in 2022 and that this year we’ll see another record year,” Triomphe said during the call. The company is predicting both volume and value increase in the U.S. for 2022, he said.
Across Sanofi’s entire business, fourth-quarter sales grew 4.1%, with specialty care charting the biggest contribution for the first time in the company’s history. It chalked up those gains to lead product Dupixent, which grew roughly 53% for the quarter.
For the full year, Sanofi’s sales climbed 7.1% to 37.76 billion euro. Dupixent made €5.25 billion (around $6 billion), while the company’s vaccines business generated €6.3 billion (about $7.2 billion), up about 7% for the full year.
Thanks to its strong Dupixent momentum, Sanofi has set the goal to “build the strongest franchise in immunology among big pharma,” chief financial officer Jean-Baptiste Chasseloup de Chatillon said last month at the 2022 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. That immunology buildout could be driven by M&A, the CFO suggested.
Separately, Sanofi on Thursday tweaked its corporate logo and websites, focusing its rebrand on a clean, lower case new logo with two purple dots at the start and end of its name. Sanofi has also moved the Sanofi Genzyme unit under the Sanofi branding, and the same goes for its vaccines unit, Sanofi Pasteur. All of its other buyouts will also use the new brand.
