AstraZeneca and GSK Post Earnings Beats as Pharma CEOs Warn Europe Risks Losing Access to New Medicines

Britain's two largest drugmakers reported first-quarter profits above analyst expectations on Wednesday, even as their chief executives intensified warnings that U.S. drug pricing policy under President Donald Trump could leave European patients without access to new medicines.

AstraZeneca posted core earnings per share of $2.58 for the first quarter, ahead of the $2.53 analysts polled by FactSet had forecast. Revenue came in at $15.3 billion, up 8% year-on-year, surpassing the $14.9 billion consensus estimate.

GSK reported core EPS of £0.47 ($0.63), beating the £0.43 that analysts expected, according to FactSet. Revenue came in at £7.63 billion ($10.3 billion), up 5% year-on-year and in line with expectations.

Both companies reaffirmed their full-year outlooks. AstraZeneca reiterated guidance for mid-to-high single-digit revenue growth and core EPS expansion in the low double digits, while remaining on track toward its stated ambition of reaching $80 billion in revenue by 2030, CEO Pascal Soriot said. GSK held to its 2026 guidance of core earnings growth of 7% to 9% and turnover growth of 3% to 5% at constant exchange rates, as it targets more than £40 billion in sales by 2031.

The results arrive as pharma executives across Europe have grown increasingly vocal about the consequences of Trump's most-favored-nation drug pricing policy, which ties U.S. medicine prices to lower prices paid in reference countries.

Soriot said Wednesday that if the gap between U.S. prices and prices in a reference country becomes too large, AstraZeneca will not be able to launch a drug there despite its "best intent" to bring new medicines to patients. The CEOs of Novartis, Roche, and Boehringer Ingelheim have made similar warnings in recent weeks.

Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan told reporters on Tuesday that the "reality of MFN" had not kicked in yet, but that it will start having an impact in the next 18 months, and that European governments have not taken sufficient action.

GSK CEO Luke Miels, who took over in January after previously serving as the company's chief commercial officer, said pricing regulations developed in the U.S. had complicated an already complex situation. "There's no immediate change to our launch sequence or our portfolio decisions based on what we know today," he said, adding that the company needs to focus on what it can control, namely developing medicines.

AstraZeneca separately announced Wednesday it would invest £300 million in U.K. life sciences, including completing a research facility in Cambridge that had been paused last year. The commitment follows a deal struck between the U.K. and the U.S. in early April, under which medicines made in Britain were exempted from tariffs in exchange for the National Health Service paying higher prices for new drugs.

Soriot said the U.K.-U.S. agreement was "certainly a very important step in the right direction," while adding that more remains to be done.

Citi analysts described AstraZeneca as "the fastest growth and best pipeline in the sector," noting 11 late-stage clinical trial readouts still expected in 2026. AstraZeneca's oncology portfolio showed particular strength, with sales rising 16% at constant exchange rates in the first quarter. In April, the company reported that a combination treatment involving cancer drug Imfinzi demonstrated meaningful improvement in time to disease progression for liver cancer patients.

Citi noted that much of GSK's EPS beat was driven by one-off legal charges. Shingrix, GSK's shingles vaccine, posted a 20% revenue increase, but that strength was offset by weaker performance in the company's general medicines division — the segment investors appeared to penalize, with GSK shares falling as much as 8% on Wednesday.

London-listed AstraZeneca shares slipped 1.4%. Coming into Wednesday's session, both stocks had significantly outpaced regional benchmarks over the prior 12 months, with GSK up 42% and AstraZeneca up 30%, compared to the Stoxx 600's 15% gain and the FTSE 100's 22% rise.

With GSK set to lose exclusivity on its top-selling HIV drug dolutegravir in 2028, Miels said the company will continue to pursue dealmaking as a source of future revenue. How both firms navigate the twin pressures of looming patent cliffs and evolving U.S. pricing policy will likely define their trajectories well beyond the current reporting cycle.

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