Ocrelizumab

After disappointing Wall Street for most of 2026, Roche’s eye disease drug Vabysmo met analysts’ expectations for the first time this year. But the company may have bigger fish to fry heading into 2027. The bispecific antibody of VEGF-A and Ang-2 brought in 1.14 billion Swiss francs ($1.38 billion) in third-quarter sales, up 10% sequentially and topping consensus estimates by 2%. The beat comes as Vabysmo hit a milestone, having treated 1.5 million patients globally, Roche’s pharmaceuticals chief Teresa Graham told investors during a call Thursday. Vabysmo is a key driver in the 9% year-over-year sales growth at constant exchange rates for Roche’s ophthalmology franchise, as the drug continues market share gains, Graham said. Vabysmo is approved in the U.S. for wet age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema and retinal vein occlusion. “By now, Vabysmo has established itself as the preferred first-line treatment, including in the U.S.,” she said. After stellar growth initially, Vabysmo suddenly lost momentum toward the end of 2025. Between the second-quarter 2025 and the second-quarter 2026, sales of the drug actually declined 1%. Roche previously attributed the deceleration to a reset of the U.S. branded VEGF market after the closure of certain charity copay programs. “I think the U.S. has re-baselined,” Graham said on Thursday’s call. “We are expecting to remain in that low single-digit growth for Vabysmo in terms of sales." “It’s probably important to note though that volume growth in the U.S. is much higher—there’s a contracting effect that takes effect here,” she continued. “And then, when you look ex-U.S., there is actually significant growth for Vabysmo, and more opportunity for growth and penetration to come outside of the U.S.” The Roche exec maintained that the current consensus peak sales outlook of 6 billion Swiss francs is “very reasonable,” and that Vabysmo is on track to achieve that. As the Vabysmo market stabilizes, Roche and investors are turning their attention to several potential blockbuster launches. The company’s oral SERD drug giredestrant is gearing up for an FDA decision by the end of November. For 2027, Roche is expecting FDA approvals for its KRAS G12C inhibitor divarasib in non-small cell lung cancer, for BTK inhibitor fenebrutinib in multiple sclerosis and sefaxersen in IgA nephropathy, among others. As Graham put it, Roche’s regulatory and launch teams will be “exceptionally busy” in the next few months. None of those will be easy rollouts. For giredestrant , the company is targeting a first-in-class adjuvant nod for early breast cancer, but as one analyst noted on the call, many doctors remain skeptical and are waiting for overall survival data to be convinced. The phase 3 lidERA trial supporting Roche’s filing will have another overall survival data cutoff toward the first half of 2027, Graham noted. As for another criticism around lidERA’s lack of involvement of a CDK4/6 inhibitor, Graham said that a single-arm sub-study in combination with Eli Lilly’s Verzenio is expected to read out this year. Roche recently also announced two new studies in the adjuvant setting, including an investigator-initiated study using a ctDNA-guided approach and a phase 1/3 testing giredestrant alongside Pfizer’s CDK4 candidate atirmociclib. For divarasib , Roche will need to compete with existing KRAS inhibitors, Amgen’s Lumakras and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Krazati. After seeing “strong” phase 3 data, to be presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology 2026 Congress this weekend, Roche has increased divarasib’s peak sales guidance to between 2 billion and 3 billion Swiss francs, Roche’s CEO Thomas Schinecker said on the call. In the BTK field, Roche’s fenebrutinib is on a collision course with Novartis’ Rhapsido in MS. It’s also not entirely clear how the oral BTK space will play out against antibody drugs such as Roche’s top-selling Ocrevus, although Graham argued fenebrutinib “will ultimately just crack up a whole new market segment,” rather than chipping away Ocrevus’ market. As for IgAN, the space has become crowded with multiple options across various mechanisms of action, including a new FDA nod Wednesday for AstraZeneca’s complement inhibitor Ultomiris. Despite the upcoming launches, one analyst on the call questioned Roche’s ability to maintain the same level of revenue growth in 2027, pointing to “growth pressures or slowdowns on a number of products.” In the first nine months of 2026, Roche’s pharmaceuticals division ginned up 36.2 billion Swiss francs ($44 billion) on the strength of a 7% year-over-year increase at constant exchange rates, and the entire group’s 46.5 billion Swiss francs marked 6% growth. “I can only say that we’re confident that we can maintain a similar momentum that we have,” Schinecker said on the call, adding that profit margins are expected to be “at least stable.”

Roche announced Thursday that sales in the third quarter climbed 8% year-on-year to CHF 16.1 billion ($19.6 billion) — coming in above forecasts of around CHF 15.8 billion — with growth in the company's pharmaceuticals unit led by Hemlibra, Ocrevus, Phesgo, Vabysmo and Xolair. Overall revenue in the drug division jumped 9% to CHF 12.6 billion.The company noted that quarterly sales of multiple sclerosis therapy Ocrevus grew 10% to CHF 1.8 billion, while revenue from haemophilia A treatment Hemlibra was up 14% at CHF 1.3 billion. Meanwhile, sales of severe eye disease drug Vabysmo lifted 14% to CHF 1.1 billion and breast cancer treatment Phesgo jumped 18% to CHF 746 million.While revenue from chronic hives and food allergy therapy Xolair increased 9% to CHF 848 million, the figure came in below expectations of CHF 925 million as the first biosimilar versions of the product launched in the US.For the current year, Roche reaffirmed its forecast that overall sales will increase in the mid-single-digit range on a constant currency basis, with core earnings growing in the high-single digits. 'Faster, more focussed'While CEO Thomas Schinecker was upbeat about the "strong sales growth" in the third quarter, he was even more enthusiastic about Roche's future prospects and its "aim to bring up to 20 new medicines to patients by 2030," with six of these potentially launching by the end of 2027."We're becoming faster, more focussed and more efficient in our research and development," Schinecker told reporters on a call on Thursday. He noted that while the average Phase III success rate for industry over the last five years is 63%, Roche achieved 65% in 2025, which has increased to 88% so far this year. "This is a significant improvement that we've made... We are on track to shorten our development time by around 22 months by year end, compared with our 2023 baseline," Schinecker said. He suggested that these "efforts over the last three years have given us…the highest value of our pipeline that we've ever had."China, US leading innovationAlong with internal assets, Roche has been bolstering its pipeline externally, including the recent expansion of an antibody-drug conjugate partnership with China's Hansoh Pharmaceutical that is potentially worth more than $15 billion. "If you look at our dealmaking over the last couple of years, I would say about 50% of the deals we've done have come from the US and 50% have come from China," Schinecker said Thursday. "In terms of innovation [the US and China] are really leading the pack in the world."Asked about Europe's position, Schinecker noted that the region "is just falling behind" in terms of innovation. "The US and China have a growth mindset. They plan for growth and they act accordingly. I think in Europe, [they] have more of a cost mindset. So [they] look at managing costs."Roche recently paused all investment decisions in Germany amid concerns over the country's healthcare cost-cutting policies. "We will invest in countries that will also reward innovation. It doesn't make sense to put a manufacturing plant into a country when they don't reimburse those medicines," Schinecker said, adding that future investment "really depends on the signals that we get from the German government."($1 = CHF 0.82037268)