Astrazeneca defends its vaccine business despite the bumpy start

The head of the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca defends its vaccine business despite the bumpy start. "We never promised too much, we communicated what we thought possible at the time," said Pascal Soriot when presenting the quarterly figures. Even if he was dissatisfied because more was not delivered, he was proud of the achievements of his company in the development and production of the product. "We have no regrets ... because we made a huge difference." At the same time, Astrazeneca held out the prospect of increasing vaccine deliveries. The company is on track to deliver 200 million doses of the vaccine a month. Production is picking up. Astrazeneca has come under fire in the past few months for repeatedly cutting vaccine commitments in the EU. Instead of the 300 million cans originally targeted for the first half of the year, the company announced in March that it would only deliver around a third. This is a setback for the EU's vaccination campaign. In the meantime, the EU has taken legal action against Astrazeneca, and a decision is planned for June. In the first quarter, Astrazeneca shipped around 68 million vaccine doses of the drug developed with the University of Oxford, generating revenues of $ 275 million, the company said. That corresponds to a price of four dollars per vaccine dose. Astrazeneca's agent costs significantly less than that of rivals Pfizer / Biontech and Moderna. Pfizer alone has promised to generate 15 billion dollars with its share of the funds, Biontech expects just under 10 billion euros, Moderna with 18.4 billion dollars. Astrazeneca has announced that it will not make any money from its vaccine during the pandemic. In the first quarter alone, earnings per share were three cents lower because of the vaccine. Overall, sales rose 11 percent currency-neutral to $ 7.32 billion and core earnings per share were $ 1.63. The numbers were better than analysts had expected. For the second half of the year, Soriot predicted an upturn in business if the impact of the corona pandemic subsided.