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Pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca has unveiled plans to slash costs by 1.5 billion US dollars (£1.1 billion) a year as part of a major restructuring to boost investment in its new drug pipeline.
The London-listed group said the three-year overhaul would cost it up to two billion dollars (£1.5 billion) in restructuring charges, but declined to provide details on where the savings would come from and whether jobs would be impacted.
Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca employs 100,000 workers globally, of which around 10,000 are based in the UK.
Its global headquarters are in Cambridge, with other UK sites including research and development (R&D) and manufacturing bases in Macclesfield, Cheshire, as well as sites in London and Speke, Liverpool.
Chief financial officer Aradhana Sarin said the programme would involve hiring more in some areas and cutting back in others.
“Overall we do expect that the company will continue to grow, we are not expecting to shrink the headcount,” she said.
“It is a reshaping programme so there will be areas where we are upskilling employees, reskilling employees, hiring new people, skills and new technology areas, and there will also be areas where we are reducing slightly or reorganising slightly.”
She also said the programme would be “widespread” and therefore not targeting one specific location or business unit.
“There’ll be elements of incorporating technology within all our processes,” she added.
The group said: “The company has initiated the ‘reshaping for sustainable growth’ programme to create additional capacity to invest behind its industry-leading pipeline and transformative technologies.
“Over the next three years, the programme will redeploy resources and strengthen capabilities across AstraZeneca’s existing business and therapy areas.”
It added: “The savings generated will continue to be reinvested back into the company, principally in the pipeline.”
Details of the cost-cutting targets came as it reported better-than-predicted profits for the third quarter, with pre-tax profits jumping 22% higher to 3.96 billion dollars (£2.9 billion).
Operating profits also rose 22% to 4.39 billion dollars (£3.21 billion).
Shares in the company jumped by around 6% on Friday following the update to around £138 a share, its highest since July.
AstraZeneca is ramping up new drug development, with more than 180 projects in the pipeline, as it looks to meet a target to reach 80 billion dollars (£58.8 billion) in annual sales by 2030.
It is expecting to underpin this with about 20 new medicine launches.
Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, said: “With multiple potential blockbuster assets in late-stage development and transformative technologies scaling rapidly, we are on track to deliver our 2030 ambition and to sustain growth through the next decade.”