Thermo Fisher: ‘Biopharma’s drive for efficiency plays into our sweet spot’
For the second quarter 2016, Thermo Fisher announced sales across its divisions of $4.5bn (€4.1bn), up 6% on the same period last year.
“Growth in our bioproduction business was particularly strong,” said CEO Marc Casper, contributing to a 14% year-on-year growth to $1.3bn within the firm’s Life Science Solutions segment.
“We’re seeing strong demand from drugs getting on market, where [we see] volume really pick up,” he told investors during a conference call yesterday.
But Thermo Fisher is also benefitting from the growing number of drugs currently in the process development stage, he continued, while “vaccine production and the increase in vaccines is a big driver of demand.”
He added that currently the quality of the research by biopharma is turning a greater number of entities into clinical and commercialised products, which in turn is driving demand for Thermo Fisher’s own products.
“Even in what I think is very good end-markets, there is an efficiency driver amongst that customer base - whether it’s small biotech or large pharma - and that plays to our sweet spot for sure.
“We see it in the results across quarter in and quarter out, the very strong performance in the biopharma customer set for us. So, we feel very well-positioned in a good end-market.”
The quarter also mirrored a number of Thermo Fisher’s rival vendors in seeing growth on the back of demand for single-use technologies, an area Casper was confident would continue to drive sales going forward.
“There has been a very large shift from stainless steel to single-use, and that also accentuates the good growth in the market,” he said. “That’s been an excellent growth market for a number of years for us and one with a very bright future.”
