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 Sales rose to 12.94 billion Swiss francs ($13.03 billion), ahead of
the 12.704 billion franc average estimate of analysts in a Reuters
poll.
The company, which confirmed its 2017 full-year targets, releases
earnings details in July.
Drug unit head Dan O'Day said new immunotherapy Tecentriq, breast
cancer drug Perjeta and newly approved multiple sclerosis drug
Ocrevus will counteract looming patent expirations for cancer
medicines Avastin, Herceptin and Rituxan.
Rituxan faces competition from near-copy biologics, called
biosimilars, this quarter, with Herceptin exposed in the second half
as patents expire.
"No surprises there, it's very much as we anticipated," O'Day told
reporters. "We remain confident with the totality of our portfolio
that we can offset the introduction of biosimilars in coming years."
Its shares were up 1.1 percent by 0935 GMT while the European drug
sector index rose 0.1 percent.
Big pharmaceutical companies often struggle to get a decent return
on the billions of dollars spent annually on research as they face
competition from a growing roster of cheap generics while healthcare
providers push back against high prices.
Roche's cross-town Basel rival, Novartis, expects sales to stagnate
in 2017 as its new launches fail to completely compensate for a
sales-eroding patent expiration on its blockbuster Gleevec blood
cancer medicine.
Britain's AstraZeneca, struggling with loss of patents on
blockbusters like cholesterol pill Crestor, reported another quarter
of falling drug sales on Thursday.
By contrast, German drug and chemical maker Bayer upgraded its
profit guidance for 2017 on Thursday after its first-quarter results
exceeded estimates.
Roche's drug division sales rose 4 percent to 10.2 billion francs,
topping the analysts' average estimate of 9.89 billion. Diagnostic
products rose 6 percent to 2.77 billion francs, also ahead of the
poll.
Sales of Tecentriq, approved last year to treat bladder and lung
cancer, hit 113 million francs, more than the 103 million estimate
in the Reuters poll.
Perjeta sales rose 19 percent to 524 million francs, with Roche
optimistic that a key trial result announced during the quarter will
expand the medicine's use in 2018.
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"Key new drugs Perjeta (and) Tecentriq continued to roll out well
and beat our expectations," Tim Race, an analyst at Deutsche Bank,
wrote. "Our first impression is of a solid quarter with few
controversies."
While Ocrevus was approved only in late March, Roche Chief Executive
Severin Schwan said the launch was going "very well" in the $20
billion overall MS market.
For the first three months of 2017, the three older drugs that
account for more than a third of Roche's revenue also beat analyst
expectations.
Herceptin sales rose 2 percent to 1.76 billion francs and Rituxan
rose 4 percent to 1.9 billion francs.
While Avastin sales slipped 2 percent to 1.68 billion francs, the
drop was less than expected.
Roche stuck to a 2017 target of a low- to mid-single-digit sales
growth rate, with similar core earnings per share growth, but some
analysts suggested the company was being tentative.
"The market is probably wondering why Roche isn't raising its 2017
guidance after such a strong first quarter," Zuercher Kantonalbank
analyst Michael Nawrath wrote.
Schwan said it would be premature to judge all of 2017 by its first
three months. "It's early in the year," Schwan said, on why he is
not boosting the target. "We concluded that we stick to the guidance
we gave at the beginning."
($1 = 0.9932 Swiss francs)
(Editing by Michael Shields and Adrian Croft)
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