Net sales grew 5.8% to $6.24 billion, beating consensus estimates
By Adrià Calatayud
Germany's Merck KGaA raised its annual guidance for the third time this year after reporting top-line growth across its three businesses.
The Darmstadt, Germany-based conglomerate has moved to reshuffle its portfolio, which spans life-science tools and services, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, since Kai Beckmann became its chief executive officer earlier this year, when Belen Garijo left for Sanofi.
The company said Thursday that its latest guidance increase -- which follows earlier upgrades alongside its earnings for the first and second quarters -- reflected improvements in its underlying performance as well as favorable currency movements, and attributed its third-quarter results to the strength of its integrated business model.
Merck expects full-year net sales to range between 21.5 billion and 21.9 billion euros ($23.84 billion-$24.29 billion), against its prior forecast of between 21 billion and 21.8 billion euros.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization excluding one-time items for the year are forecast at between 6.2 billion and 6.4 billion euros, which compares with previous guidance of 5.9 billion to 6.3 billion euros.
"Our upgraded full-year guidance reflects our confidence that Merck will continue to deliver solid performance in 2026," Chief Executive Kai Beckmann said.
Under Beckmann, Merck has embarked on a portfolio shake-up, striking deals to buy Bio-Techne and Silence Therapeutics to bolster its life-sciences and healthcare divisions, and selling its contract-drug-manufacturing operations to Lonza Group.
For the third quarter, Merck reported an after-tax profit of 450 million euros, down 50% compared with the year-earlier period, when its results benefited from one-off gains.
Excluding one-time items, Ebitda was up 0.8% at 1.68 billion euros, the company said. Analysts polled by Vara Research had forecast the metric at 1.61 billion euros.
Net sales grew 5.8% to 5.63 billion euros, beating consensus estimates of 5.46 billion euros. Quarterly sales grew 5.1% organically, Merck said.
All three segments posted organic growth for the quarter, but the company's performance was mainly driven by its electronics and life-science divisions. Its healthcare business continues to reel from the loss of patent protection for key drugs such as multiple-sclerosis treatment Mavenclad.
The company said its results benefited from strong demand for pharmaceutical-process services in its life-sciences segment, rare-disease drugs in its healthcare unit, and semiconductor materials in its electronics business.