AstraZeneca aims to nearly double sales to $107.8b by 2030

London – AstraZeneca aims to almost double sales to US$80 billion (S$107.8 billion) by 2030 as chief executive officer Pascal Soriot seeks to cement his legacy at the British drugmaker that he helped to save through a bet on cancer treatments.

The company, which generated US$45.8 billion in revenue last year, will launch 20 new medicines by the end of the decade to meet the new total revenue target, Astra said on May 21. US investment bank Jefferies had forecast revenue to exceed US$70 billion by 2031.

AstraZeneca set the target ahead of its investor day – its first in 10 years – as Mr Soriot looks to set the company apart in the highly competitive cancer-medicine market. Drugmakers are racing to replace traditional chemotherapy with products that more precisely target cancer cells.

The last investor day took place in 2014, in the wake of Pfizer’s attempted takeover of the British company, when Mr Soriot was two years into the job and had yet to prove himself. At the time, he had pledged to raise annual revenue to more than US$45 billion by 2023, a target AstraZeneca met thanks to its focus on cancer drugs such as Tagrisso and Imfinzi.

The company has since expanded to antibody drug conjugates, including Enhertu, a new class of drugs that deliver high medicine doses directly to tumours while minimising damage to surrounding tissues.

AstraZeneca announced on May 20 that it will build a

US$1.5 billion facility in Singapore

for manufacturing antibody drug conjugates (ADC) that it targets it to be operationally ready from 2029. It will mark the company’s first end-to-end ADC production site, fully incorporating all steps of the manufacturing process at a commercial scale. BLOOMBERG