SOURCE: As­so­ci­at­ed Press

LON­DON (AP) — As­traZeneca record­ed a big jump in rev­enue on Thurs­day as it be­gins to take a prof­it from its coro­n­avirus vac­cine for the first time.

The com­pa­ny record­ed full-year rev­enues of $37.4 bil­lion, an in­crease of 38% from the year be­fore at con­stant ex­change rates. Part of the boost came from $4 bil­lion in sales of its COVID-19 vac­cine, de­vel­oped with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford.

De­spite ris­ing rev­enue, As­traZeneca re­port­ed a pre-tax loss of $265 mil­lion due to costs from its pur­chase of U.S. drug com­pa­ny Alex­ion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and new drug re­search.

The An­glo-Swedish drug­mak­er said in No­vem­ber it would be­gin to take a “mod­est” prof­it from the COVID-19 shot, which it had been pro­vid­ing “at cost” — around $2 to $3 —fol­low­ing an agree­ment with Ox­ford. Oth­er COVID-19 vac­cine pro­duc­ers, such as Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na, have been book­ing hefty prof­its on their shots all along.

In the three months to Sep­tem­ber, the com­pa­ny said rev­enue jumped by about 50%, to a record $9.9 bil­lion. The in­crease was due to sales of more than $1 bil­lion in COVID-19 vac­cines and the in­clu­sion for the first time of some $1.3 bil­lion worth of rev­enue from its rare dis­ease busi­ness unit fol­low­ing the re­cent ac­qui­si­tion of Alex­ion.

As­traZeneca fore­cast to­tal group sales to rise by a “high teens per­cent­age” in 2022, but said COVID-19 rev­enues would de­cline by a “a low-to-mid twen­ties per­cent­age.”

Chief ex­ec­u­tive Pas­cal So­ri­ot said As­traZeneca had “de­liv­ered on our promise of broad and eq­ui­table ac­cess to our COVID-19 vac­cine with 2.5 bil­lion dos­es re­leased for sup­ply around the world.”

“As­traZeneca con­tin­ued on its strong growth tra­jec­to­ry in 2021, with in­dus­try-lead­ing R&D (re­search and de­vel­op­ment) pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, five of our med­i­cines cross­ing new block­buster thresh­olds, and the ac­qui­si­tion and in­te­gra­tion of Alex­ion,” he said.

So­ri­ot said the com­pa­ny would raise the div­i­dend to share­hold­ers by 10 cents to $2.90, the first in­crease in a decade.

As­traZeneca shares were trad­ing about 3% high­er at 8.62 pounds ($11.68) on the Lon­don Stock Ex­change on Thurs­day morn­ing.