By Bhanvi Satija
LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – French drugmaker Sanofi said on Thursday it expects sales to grow by a high-single-digit percentage in 2026, banking on strong demand for its blockbuster asthma drug Dupixent and some newer medicines.
The company also said it expects business operating income to grow slightly faster than sales this year, and plans to buy back 1 billion euros ($1.20 billion) in shares. In 2025, Sanofi completed a 5 billion euro share buyback program.
Sanofi’s chief financial officer François-Xavier Roger said Dupixent and contributions from recently launched medicines such as rare blood disorder drug Wayrilz will continue to grow, but vaccine sales will be “slightly negative” for the year partly due to changes in U.S. policy.
“Dosing, administration, and insurance coverage remain largely the same….It’s more a perception issue more than anything else,” he said on a call with journalists.
Sanofi has been seeking new products to drive revenue growth once Dupixent goes off patent in 2031, and has laid out plans to be more active with mergers and acquisitions.
Roger said that Sanofi will not be able to mitigate the sales impact of Dupixent going off patent.
“It’s too big to be mitigated,” he said, adding the company was working towards managing the anticipated hit to its profit with a combination of research and development investments and acquisitions.
Its largest deal in 2025 was a $9.5 billion acquisition of Blueprint Medicines that added an approved drug, Ayvakit, for a rare blood disorder to its portfolio, which is expected to bring in blockbuster sales.
Last year, Sanofi also agreed to buy adult vaccine maker Dynavax Technologies for $2.2 billion in December, and closed its $1.5 billion acquisition of British private vaccine developer Vicebio in July.
For the fourth quarter, business operating income was 2.34 billion euros, compared to 2.37 billion euros expected on average by analysts in a company-provided poll.
Quarterly sales of Dupixent, which Sanofi makes with partner Regeneron, were 4.25 billion euros, compared with 4.05 billion euros expected on average by analysts.
($1 = 0.8345 euros)
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija in London; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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