Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan 2 million salary increase

(Updated at 10.57 am) - Despite some slowdown in drug demand due to coronavirus restrictions, Novartis made more money in 2020 and saw turnover increase. Shareholders will see the dividend grow, but the stock market reacted badly: the prudence of forecasts for the current year weighs heavily.

According to data released today by the Rhenish pharmaceutical giant, 2020 closed with a profit of 8.1 billion dollars (7.2 billion francs), 13% more than in 2019. Turnover increased by 3% to 48.7 billion dollars.

The areas of growth were Cosentyx, a preparation for psoriasis (chronic skin disease), which became the number one drug with $ 4 billion, and Entresto, a remedy for heart failure. The most expensive drug in the world at more than 2 million a single intervention Zolgensma, a Novartis’ gene therapy is at the center of heated discussions in recent years. One-off surgery is used to treat very young children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), an inherited disease whose most severe form is usually fatal.

Given the good business performance, shareholders will be offered a dividend of 3 francs, 5 cents more than the previous year. In addition, securities repurchase programs are planned for a volume of up to 10 billion francs.

In the forecast chapter, CEO Vasant Narasimhan - who in 2020 saw his salary rise by 2 million, reaching 12.7 million - underlined how the pandemic will continue to affect Novartis’ business in the first half of 2021 as well. He expects a low to medium-digit percentage increase in sales, while operating profit net of one-off effects is expected to rise by an average percentage figure and more markedly than turnover.

Analysts, who did not miss the slight downward adjustment in revenue estimates, did not react enthusiastically. The stock market followed the instructions of the experts and punished the stock: in the morning the stock lost about 3%, against a market generally oriented towards a fractional rise.

Novartis was launched in 1996 from the merger between Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz. The group traces its most distant roots to over 250 years ago, precisely to 1758, when Johann Rudolf Geigy-Gemuseus founded the trading company JR Geigy in Basel, specialized in dealing with «materials, chemicals, dyes and drugs of all kinds». Ciba was founded in 1859 and Sandoz in 1886. Today Novartis is a company that supplies medicines to around 800 million people around the world. The group employs 110,000 people of over 140 different nationalities.