Roche beats analysts profit expectations for 2007

Pharmaceutical group Roche’s profit rose 10.44 billion dollars in 2007. The analysts expectations were beaten.

Photo: Roche beats analysts profit expectations for 2007

The company’s profit was up 25 percent from a year ago.

Its turnover also grew despite the fact that sales of bird flu drug Tamiflu decreased by 19 percent.

F. Hoffmann–La Roche, Ltd. is a Swiss global health-care company which operates world-wide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. It belongs to the Roche Holding AG.

The headquarters are in Basel and the company has many sites around the world - including: Nutley, Palo Alto, Pleasanton, Branchburg, Indianapolis, Florence in the US, Welwyn Garden City in the UK, Mannheim, Penzberg in Germany, and Shanghai in China.

The company also owns a majority of the American biotechnology company Genentech and the Japanese biotechnology company Chugai Pharmaceuticals.

Roche Holding AG (ticker ROC.S) is listed on the London-based virt-x stock exchange (virt-x is a company of the SWX Swiss Exchange). Roche's revenues during fiscal year 2005 were $28.6 billion (2005, 35.5bn CHF). Descendants of the founding Hoffmann and Oeri families own half of the company. Swiss pharma company Novartis owns 33% of the company (as of 2005).