ISTANBUL – The trial is set to begin against a Turkish employee of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul charged with espionage and attempting to overthrow the Turkish government.
Metin Topuz, a translator and fixer for the Drug Enforcement Agency at the consulate, will have his first hearing Tuesday. He has been in pretrial detention since October 2017.
Topuz is accused of links to U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government blames for the 2016 coup attempt. He denies the allegations.
Topuz's arrest led to the suspension of bilateral visa services for more than two months in 2017 and is one of several contentious issues increasing tensions between the two NATO allies.
The first hearing in Istanbul is expected to continue until Thursday.
A Swastika, painted on the wall of the Stedelijk Museum overnight, is seen in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, Feb. 22, 2019. Vandals suspected of being football hooligans from The Hague have daubed graffiti including swastikas and anti-Semitic texts on buildings in Amsterdam. The graffiti were discovered Friday, ahead of a match Sunday between ADO and Amsterdam powerhouse Ajax. Ajax fans are banned from attending the match following previous clashes between fans of the two clubs. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
AMSTERDAM – Vandals suspected of being soccer hooligans from The Hague have painted graffiti including swastikas and anti-Semitic texts on buildings in Amsterdam.
The graffiti was discovered Friday, ahead of Sunday's match between ADO and Ajax in The Hague. Ajax fans are banned from attending the match.
ADO director Mattijs Manders says "we as a club strongly reject these incomprehensible acts. It is disrespectful and sad."
Ajax is often portrayed as a club with historic links to Amsterdam's Jewish community.
A statue in Amsterdam that commemorates a general strike in 1941 to protest the rounding up of Jews by Nazi occupiers of the city during World War II was vandalized with green and yellow paint — the colors of ADO The Hague.
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Trooper Brooke Jones-Story, 34, left, was killed Thursday in the 15th crash into a stopped squad car on the Illinois interstate this year. Trooper Christopher Lambert, 34, right, was killed in January when he was struck outside his vehicle while responding to a three-car crash. (Illinois State Police)
Crashes into stopped squad cars on Illinois roadways, that have killed two state troopers and hospitalized at least one other since January, have state lawmakers urging drivers to "do the decent thing" and follow the law.
The latest case -- death of Trooper Brooke Jones-Story, 34, on Thursday -- resulted from the 15th crash this year involving a state law enforcement vehicle.
State officials have been campaigning to get drivers to slow down and change lanes for stationary emergency vehicles that have their warning lights turned on, an act called Scott’s Law, since a trooper was struck and killed in January while responding to a three-car crash.
Killed in that crash was 34-year-old Trooper Christopher Lambert, who was standing near the crash site when he was struck by a Jeep that had failed to slow down. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. He left behind a 1-year-old child.
Illinois State Police vehicles line up outside the Stephenson County Coroner's office on Thursday in Freeport, Ill., after a procession to deliver the body of Trooper Brooke Jones-Story who was struck and killed by a truck while conducting a traffic stop on Highway 20. (Associated Press)
Jones-Story left her vehicle, with the emergency lights turned on, to conduct a truck inspection on the side of the highway. A “truck tractor semi-trailer combination” then veered off the roadway struck the squad car, followed by the commercial vehicle, and fatally struck the trooper, Illinois State Police (ISP) Acting Director Brendan F. Kelly said
The 12-year veteran leaves behind her husband, two stepchildren and a stepgrandchild, as well as other family members, according to officials.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker offered prayers to the family following the “devastating” loss, urging drivers that the “only decent thing to do” is to change lanes or slow down.
“Our state troopers do incredible work keeping the public safe, and it is devastating to the entire state that another has been killed on the side of a highway,” he wrote on Twitter.
“I cannot stress strongly enough – when you see an emergency vehicle on the side of the road, change lanes or slow down” he continued. “It’s the law, and it’s the only decent thing to do.”
Scott’s Law, also known as the “Move Over” Law, requires drivers to slow down and change lanes upon approaching “stationary authorized emergency” vehicles with their warning lights on, the Illinois State Police explained on their website.
The police issued a tweet Thursday, following Jones-Story’s death, with a photo of the highway’s overhead signs reading: “Enough Is Enough,” along with a notice on Scott’s Law.
One week before the death of Jones-Story, the state’s 14th accident nearly killed another trooper. The unidentified trooper was responding to a vehicle that hit a light pole when a passing truck struck him outside of his marked squad car, with lights activated, KFVS-TV of Cape Girardeau, Mo., reported. He was rushed to a hospital and was in serious but stable condition.
In the wake of the crashes, lawmakers have urged tougher penalties for drivers who break Scott’s Law, the Chicago Tribune reported. A new bill, if passed, could slap drivers with a misdemeanor charge for crashes that lead to injury or death. Violators currently face up to a $10,000 fine and lose their license.
Fox News' Elizabeth Zwirz contributed to this report.
FILE PHOTO: The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's President and CEO Eric S. Rosengren speaks in New York, April 17, 2013. REUTERS/Keith Bedford/File Photo
March 26, 2019
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Eric Rosengren sees a rate hike as the U.S. central bank’s possible next move, according to an interview with Bloomberg published on Tuesday.
Rosengren described himself as “more optimistic” over the economic outlook than his colleagues on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Rosengren has a vote on that committee this year.
If he turns out to be right about his economic forecast, he told Bloomberg, “it is possible the next move would be up” but if conditions deteriorate it is also possible that the next move could be a rate cut.
The interview was conducted on Friday.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Storage tanks for radioactive water are seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan February 18, 2019. Picture taken February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato
March 11, 2019
By Kiyoshi Takenaka
OKUMA, Japan (Reuters) – Eight years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, a fresh obstacle threatens to undermine the massive clean-up: 1 million tons of contaminated water must be stored, possibly for years, at the power plant.
Last year, Tokyo Electric Power Co said a system meant to purify contaminated water had failed to remove dangerous radioactive contaminants.
That means most of that water – stored in 1,000 tanks around the plant – will need to be reprocessed before it is released into the ocean, the most likely scenario for disposal.
Reprocessing could take nearly two years and divert personnel and energy from dismantling the tsunami-wrecked reactors, a project that will take up to 40 years.
It is unclear how much that would delay decommissioning. But any delay could be pricey; the government estimated in 2016 that the total cost of plant dismantling, decontamination of affected areas, and compensation, would amount to 21.5 trillion yen ($192.5 billion), roughly 20 percent of the country’s annual budget.
Tepco is already running out of space to store treated water. And should another big quake strike, experts say tanks could crack, unleashing tainted liquid and washing highly radioactive debris into the ocean.
Fishermen struggling to win back the confidence of consumers are vehemently opposed to releasing reprocessed water – deemed largely harmless by Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) – into the ocean.
“That would destroy what we’ve been building over the past eight years,” said Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations. Last year’s catch was just 15 percent of pre-crisis levels, partly because of consumer reluctance to eat fish caught off Fukushima.
SLOW PROGRESS
On a visit to the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant last month, huge cranes hovered over the four reactor buildings that hug the coast. Workers could be seen atop the No. 3 building getting equipment ready to lift spent fuel rods out of a storage pool, a process that could start next month.
In most areas around the plant, workers no longer need to wear face masks and full body suits to protect against radiation. Only the reactor buildings or other restricted areas require special equipment.
Fanning out across the plant’s property are enough tanks to fill 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Machines called Advanced Liquid Processing Systems, or ALPS, had treated the water inside them.
Tepco said the equipment could remove all radionuclides except tritium, a relatively harmless hydrogen isotope that is hard to separate from water. Tritium-laced water is released into the environment at nuclear sites around the world.
But after newspaper reports last year questioned the effectiveness of ALPS-processed water, Tepco acknowledged that strontium-90 and other radioactive elements remained in many of the tanks.
Tepco said the problems occurred because absorbent materials in the equipment had not been changed frequently enough.
The utility has promised to re-purify the water if the government decides that releasing it into the ocean is the best solution. It is the cheapest of five options a government task force considered in 2016; others included evaporation and burial.
Tepco and the government are now waiting for another panel of experts to issue recommendations. The head of the panel declined an interview request. No deadline has been set.
NRA chief Toyoshi Fuketa believes ocean release after dilution is the only feasible way to handle the water problem. He has warned that postponing the decision indefinitely could derail the decommissioning project.
STORING INDEFINITELY
Another option is to store the water for decades in enormous tanks normally used for crude oil. The tanks have been tested for durability, said Yasuro Kawai, a plant engineer and a member of Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy, a group advocating abandoning nuclear energy.
Each tank holds 100,000 tons, so 10 such tanks could store the roughly 1 million tons of water processed by ALPS so far, he said.
The commission proposes holding the tritium-laced water, which has a half life of 12.3 years, in tanks for 123 years. After that, it will be one thousandth as radioactive as it was when it went into storage.
Although experts caution that tanks would be vulnerable to major quakes, Japan’s trade and industry minister, Hiroshige Seko, said the committee would consider them anyway.
“Long-term storage … has an upside as radiation levels come down while it is in storage. But there is a risk of leakage,” Seko told Reuters. “It is difficult to hold the water indefinitely, so the panel will also look into how it should be disposed of eventually.”
Space is also a problem, said Akira Ono, Tepco’s chief decommissioning officer. By 2020, the utility will expand tank storage capacity by 10 percent to 1.37 million tons, and about 95 percent of total capacity will probably be used by the end of that year, he said.
“Tanks are now being built on flat, elevated spots in stable locations,” Ono said. But such ideal space is getting scarce, he added.
Many local residents hope Tepco will just keep storing the water. If it does get released into the ocean, “everyone would sink into depression,” said fishing trawler captain Koichi Matsumoto.
Fukushima was once popular with surfers. But young people in the area do not go surfing any more because they’ve been repeatedly warned about suspected radioactivity in the water, said surf shop owner Yuichiro Kobayashi.
Releasing treated water from the plant “could end up chasing the next generation of children away from the sea as well,” he said.
Ono says dealing with contaminated water is one of many complex issues involved in decommissioning.
A year ago, when he took over leading the effort, it felt like the project had just “entered the trailhead,” he said. “Now, it feels like we’re really starting to climb.”
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Gerry Doyle)
In an address to the nation’s parliament, Sri Lanka’s Defense Minister said that the Islamic terror attacks on luxury hotels and churches which killed nearly 300 people and injured hundreds more were a response to the New Zealand mosque shooting.
“Investigations reveal that this attack was carried out in response to the Christchurch Mosque Attack in New Zealand on Muslims. There was a security lapse leading to this devastation in Sri Lanka,” said Ruwan Wijewardene.
The defense minister confirmed that two domestic Islamist terror groups were responsible for the bloodshed.
50 people were killed and 50 injured when a 28-year-old Australian white supremacist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 15.
Quite how murdering hundreds of Christians in a totally different country is a legitimate response to the actions of a single lunatic in New Zealand remains unknown.
As we previously highlighted, while world leaders were quick to offer condolences to the “Muslim community” following the mosque attack, many of them appear afraid to even use the word “Christians” when discussing the Sri Lanka attack.
Meanwhile, the media has once again made the issue about the reaction of the “far-right” and not the fact that Christians are the most persecuted and killed religious group on the planet.
White supremacist massacres Muslims in New Zealand: let's talk about the far-right
The U.S. National Security Council issued a direct warning to Italy last weekend for its coziness with China.
The country has been considering participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where one segment of the global economic effort aims to unite Europe with China.
“Italy is a major global economy and a great investment destination. Endorsing BRI lends legitimacy to China’s predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people,” tweeted the US National Security Council.
Italy is a major global economy and a great investment destination. Endorsing BRI lends legitimacy to China’s predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte believes otherwise. Conte has overruled the foreign ministry and joined right-wing Eurosceptics in his push for closer cooperation with China.
“With all the necessary precautions, Italy’s accession to a new silk route represents an opportunity for our country,” Conte said Friday.
President Xi Jinping is expected to travel to Italy from March 22-24, and Conte said Rome and Beijing are expected to agree to a framework deal during the state visit. Conte also announced his plan to attend an upcoming BRI summit in China.
The Italian leader’s plan to attend a BRI summit in Beijing next month has caused panic in Brussels and Washington, as Italy is on course to become the first G7 country to gravitate to China’s trade initiative that US and EU officials have intensely criticized.
“Italian governments have always had a keen eye on the belt and road, as the attention with which the current administration follows developments is largely inherited from the previous governments,” said Giovanni Andornino, a China expert based at the University of Torino in northern Italy.
“What is different now is that this government is much happier in having interaction with China, as opposed to being a driving force in the process of the EU-wide negotiation with China,” Andornino said.
Wang Yiwei, director of the Centre for EU Studies at the Renmin University of China, said Rome’s resistance against Washington and Brussels stemmed from the Eurosceptic roots of its populist government.
“The current Italian government has always opposed the European Union, so they are less prejudiced against [China’s initiative] than the traditional political parties in Europe,” said Wang, who was a diplomat at the Chinese mission to the European Union from 2008 to 2011.”
(Photo by Пресс-служба Президента Российской Федерации / Wikimedia Commons)
Like many other nations in southern Europe, Italy is attempting to pull itself out of a deep economic recession that started at the end of 2018. Italy can’t turn to Brussels nor Washington because they currently don’t have a viable plan to restore economic growth. So right-wing Eurosceptics are increasingly resorting to aligning with China (and often, Russia), a move that has left Washington furious.
FILE PHOTO: A worker holds a nozzle to pump petrol into a vehicle at a fuel station in Mumbai, India, May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas
April 26, 2019
By Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Surging global oil prices will pose a first big challenge to India’s new government, whoever wins an election now under way, especially as domestic prices have been allowed to lag, meaning consumers are in for a painful surge as they catch up.
For oil-import dependent India, higher global prices could lead to a weaker rupee, higher inflation, the ruling out of interest rate cuts and could further weigh on twin current account and budget deficits, economists warned.
But compounding the future pain, state-run fuel suppliers and retailers have held off passing on to consumers the higher prices during a staggered general election, which began on April 11 and ends on May 23, according to sources familiar with the situation.
That delay is expected to be unwound once the election is over. And there could be additional price increases to make up for losses or profits missed during the period of delayed increases, the sources said.
In some major Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, pump prices are adjusted periodically so they move largely in tandem with international crude prices.
That was what was supposed to happen in India but the election means there have been many days when pump prices have been unchanged.
In New Delhi, for example, while crude oil prices have gone up by nearly $9 a barrel, or about 12 percent, in the past six weeks, gasoline prices have only risen by 0.47 rupees a liter, or 0.6 percent.
State-controlled fuel suppliers and retailers declined to say why they had delayed price increases, or discuss whether there has been any pressure from the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A government spokesman declined to comment.
The opposition Congress party said Modi’s government was violating its own policy of daily price revision by advising the state oil companies to hold prices steady.
“The government should cut fuel taxes otherwise consumers will have to pay much higher oil prices once the elections are over,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, a senior leader of the Congress party.
Nitin Goyal, treasurer at the All India Petroleum Dealers Association, representing fuel stations in 25 states, said prices were similarly held down for 19 days in the southern state of Karnataka last year, when it held state assembly elections.
Only for them to surge after the vote.
“Consumers should be ready for a rude shock of a massive jump in retail prices, similar to the level we have seen in the Karnataka state election,” Goyal said.
‘CREDIT NEGATIVE’
Sri Paravaikkarasu, director for Asia oil at Singapore-based consultancy FGE, said retail prices of gasoline and gasoil prices would have been up to 6 percent, or about 4 rupee, higher if they had been allowed to rise in line with global prices.
“Indian pump prices have failed to keep up with the recent uptrend in crude prices,” Paravaikkarasu said.
“With the country’s general elections underway, the incumbent government has been keeping pump prices relatively unchanged.”
India had switched to a daily price revision in June 2017 from a revision every two weeks, as the government allowed retailers to set prices.
But the government faced protests last October when retailers raised prices by up to 10 rupees a liter after the crude oil price went above $80 a barrel, forcing it to cut fuel taxes.
Global prices rose to their highest level in 2019 on Thursday, days after the United States announced all Iran sanction waivers would end by May, pressuring importers including India to stop buying Tehran’s oil. [O/R]
Higher oil prices will mean Asia’s third largest economy is likely to see growth of less than 7 percent rate this fiscal year, economists said. Growth slowed to 6.6 percent in the October-December quarter, the slowest in five quarters.
Rating agency CARE has warned that a 10 percent rise in global oil prices could increase demand for dollars, putting pressure on the rupee and widening the current account deficit.
India’s oil import bill rose by nearly one-third in the fiscal year ending March 31 to $140.5 billion, against $108 billion the previous year.
“The increase in international oil prices is a credit negative for the Indian economy,” ICRA, the Indian arm of the Fitch rating agency, said in a note.
“Every $10/ bbl increase in crude oil prices increases the fiscal deficit by about 0.1 percent of GDP.”
Any big price rise would also build a case for the central bank to keep rates steady, or even raise them.
The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, which cut the benchmark policy repo rate by 25 basis points this month, warned that rising oil and food prices could push up inflation.
Policymakers are worried that a sustained increase in the oil price in the range of $70-75/barrel or higher can move the rupee down by 3-4 percent on an annual basis.
The rupee has depreciated by 1.24 percent against the dollar since a year high in mid-March.
($1 = 70.1800 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma; Editing by Martin Howell and Rob Birsel)
FILE PHOTO: Uber’s logo is displayed on a mobile phone in London, Britain, September 14, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc unveiled terms for its initial public offering on Friday, telling investors it would seek to sell as much as $10.35 billion in stock at a valuation of up to $91.5 billion.
In a regulatory filing, Uber set a target price range of $44-$50 per share for its IPO. The company will sell 180 million shares in the offering, with a further 27 million sold by insiders.
In the filing, Uber also reported a net loss attributable to the company for the first quarter of 2019 of around $1 billion and revenues of roughly $3 billion.
(Reporting by Joshua Franklin; editing by Patrick Graham)
FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways aircraft are seen parked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Aditi Shah and Abhirup Roy
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – The grounding of India’s Jet Airways is turning into a quick windfall and long-term opportunity for international airlines keen to scoop up nearly a million outbound passengers from what was once the nation’s biggest airline.
Jet, which previously had a fleet of around 120 largely Boeing Co planes, was forced to indefinitely halt all flight operations on April 17 after its banks rejected the carrier’s plea for emergency funds.
The carrier’s descent into crisis has benefited international airlines in the form of rising fares and demand, data showed.
Fares from India to cities such as Dubai, London, New York, Singapore and Bali in the first quarter of 2019 rose between 4 percent and 32 percent from a year ago, according to Indian travel portal MakeMyTrip Ltd.
In the peak travel months of May and June, fares to London have spiked as much as 36 percent and tickets to San Francisco are up nearly 20 percent from a year ago, according to data from travel portal Yatra.com.
“For the next three months it’s actually bonanza time for international players,” said Ashish Nainan, a research analyst at CARE Ratings. “At least until the middle of June, the fares are not going to come down.”
Due to rising demand, even before Jet’s lessors grounded planes, carriers such as British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd and United Airlines saw an up to a 27 percent increase in passenger numbers from India in the last quarter of 2018, data from India’s aviation regulator showed. That is the latest period for which the data is available.
India is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, clocking 15-20 percent domestic growth in recent years. It has long had only two full-service long-haul carriers, state-run Air India and Jet.
Jet is now hoping to be bailed out by a new investor, with final bids due on May 10.
INCREASING CAPACITY
Before its grounding, Jet had the biggest share of India’s outbound international air traffic, carrying 12 percent of the 7.8 million passengers headed overseas in the Oct-Dec quarter, down from 14 percent a year earlier, data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation showed.
For an interactive graphic on Jet’s market share, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2WvDQYi
For an interactive graphic on average daily flights by the airline, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2FeFDel
The total number of passengers traveling overseas with Jet fell 10 percent during the last quarter of 2018 even as the outbound travel market grew about 5 percent.
Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines posted a 27 percent increase in passengers from India, Cathay registered 17 percent growth and British Airways saw a 10 percent rise in the same period.
Cathay said the events at Jet combined with increasing demand for travel had led it to deploy larger aircraft with more seats on some Indian routes.
“In the long term we would certainly like to be able to offer more capacity into India, not just on our existing routes but by establishing new services to secondary cities,” Cathay said in a statement.
Singapore Airlines, in an email to Reuters, said the Indian market is “very promising” but declined to give details of airfare levels or demand patterns in the wake of Jet’s exit, citing a quiet period before the release of its annual results.
DOMESTIC GAINS
Jet’s grounding has also had a big impact on the domestic market, with inter-city air fares to major cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata soaring more than 20 percent in May and June, according to Yatra.com.
The spike in fares is expected to underpin strong earnings for IndiGo and SpiceJet Ltd, which are set to report results for the quarter ended March 31 in the coming weeks.
“Domestic Indian carriers are the main benefactors, but I suspect if Jet fails to be revived by May 10 then Vistara and other airlines that ply international routes, particularly the lucrative Gulf market, are the main winners,” said Shukor Yusof, the head of aviation consultancy Endau Analytics. Vistara is a joint venture of India’s Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.
Inadequate bilateral traffic rights between India and other countries, however, could be an impediment to foreign carriers’ hopes of winning business lost by Jet, some analysts said.
“Even before Jet’s operational shutdown, international capacity was significantly constrained,” said Kapil Kaul, CEO for South Asia of consultancy CAPA. “We have now more serious capacity challenge … this is unlikely to be stabilized in the near term.”
A new national government likely to be in place sometime after elections end in May is expected to address the international capacity constraints, and once bilateral agreements are eased airlines including Emirates, Turkish and Qatar would immediately benefit, said Kaul.
“We would love to add more flights but we are at the limit of the allocation granted to us for traffic rights,” Emirates Chief Commercial Officer Thierry Antinori told reporters in Dubai on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai, Jamie Freed in Singapore and Tanvi Mehta in Mumbai; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
FILE PHOTO: The company logo for pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 26, 2019
By Pushkala Aripaka and Ankur Banerjee
(Reuters) – AstraZeneca Plc beat first-quarter sales and earnings expectations on Friday as the British drugmaker benefited from a push into cancer drugs and emerging markets including China.
Newer treatments such as lung cancer drug Tagrisso, now the company’s top selling medicine, have helped the drugmaker’s return to growth after years of crumbling sales due to patent losses on older drugs.
Sales in China have shown explosive growth, more than doubling since 2012, but AstraZeneca executives on Friday said that may not be sustained.
“The enormous growth you currently see in China, 28 percent, probably is not sustainable, but we feel very bullish that the growth will continue to be at a pace of between 15 percent and 20 percent,” Ruud Dobber, executive vice president, BioPharma, told Reuters.
Shares of the company were down 0.2 percent at 5,878 pence at 1031 GMT.
The turnaround in AstraZeneca’s fortunes has been powered by a push into cancer treatments led by Chief Executive Pascal Soriot, who saw off a 2014 takeover bid from Pfizer in part by promising annual sales of $45 billion by 2023.
In the first quarter, sales from its oncology unit rose 59 percent to $1.89 billion, accounting for 35 percent of total product sales.
The company has moved deeper into cancer therapy market through wide-ranging deals, including those for immunotherapy and targeted therapy. Last month, it agreed a multi-billion dollar oncology deal with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd.
Interactive graphic on AZN’s top 10 drugs by sales – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W5XIRX
“We’re reaching that point where after years of having to keep faith, we have actually got something tangible to believe in,” Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Nicholas Hyett said.
AstraZeneca also backed its annual sales and earnings forecast and said it has extensively prepared for UK’s anticipated exit from the European Union, even in the event of a no-deal exit.
The company has already spent more than 40 million pounds ($52 million) on Brexit preparations, including stockpiling six weeks’ worth of drugs in the UK and four weeks in continental Europe to guard against shortages.
AstraZeneca said product sales rose 14 percent at constant currency to $5.47 billion in the quarter, led by its lung cancer drug Tagrisso and respiratory treatment Pulmicort.
Interactive graphic on AZN’s quarterly oncology sales – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W9tbCD
China sales increased by 28 percent to $1.24 billion in the quarter, accounting for nearly a quarter of overall product sales.
Core earnings came in at 89 cents per share in the quarter. Analysts on average were expecting core earnings of 85 cents per share and product sales of $5.29 billion, according to a company provided consensus of 19 analysts.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr/Keith Weir)
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