“You don’t spend one and a half billion dollars without creating jobs,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said as the pharma announced a new cost savings program alongside third quarter earnings.
AstraZeneca has rolled out a $1.5 billion three-year cost savings program to redeploy resources to areas for growth. While no layoffs are expected, executives said the program will impact all areas of the business and could involve shifting certain workers and resources to support emerging areas.
“You don’t spend one and a half billion dollars without creating jobs,” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a Friday morning third quarter earnings call with media. “It’s more reallocation of resources across the pipeline and across the world. But in the end we are still a growing company, and the idea is not to shrink the company. The opposite, actually.”
The program has been dubbed the Reshaping for Sustainable Growth (RSG) program, with CFO Aradhana Sarin suggesting that “reshaping” is key to understanding the effort. The initial cost will be $2 billion, with a projected $1.5 billion in savings. AstraZeneca will work to “upskill” or “reskill” certain employees, hire new people or employ technology for efficiencies.
“The intention is to create capacity in the organization to absorb the growth that we’re expected to have without necessarily, you know, growing all through headcount,” Sarin said.
AstraZeneca booked $16.2 billion in total revenue for the quarter, a 7% jump over the same period a year before and 8% above consensus, Leerink Partners said in a Friday morning note. This total includes $15.1 billion in total product sales and $1.1 billion in alliance revenue. Oncology products delivered $7.1 billion—15% above Q3 2025—while rare disease grew 10% to $2.63 billion.
Oncology blockbuster Tagrisso had a particularly strong quarter, with worldwide sales of $2.2 billion for a 4% beat on consensus. The product is serving as the backbone treatment option for all stages of EGFR lung cancer, Leerink noted.
The strategy that AstraZeneca has deployed to build out Tagrisso will come into play in the pharma’s recent equity and clinical deals with Summit Therapeutics, Soriot said. The partners will work on different antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) combinations for cancer with the biotech’s China-developed PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody ivonescimab.
“If we want to maximize the value of this ADC platform and bring physicians options that meet their needs, we need to combine with a PD-1/VEGF,” Soriot said.
Similarly, AstraZeneca has worked to test a combination of Tagrisso with two other agents for lung cancer to provide additional treatment options.
Soriot also suggested that the company is looking at potential business development activities in oncology, cardiovascular, rare disease, immunology and respiratory disease.
“We have a strong pipeline as it is.” Soriot said. “We can grow nicely beyond 2030, but we are constantly looking at how do we strengthen our presence in [one] franchise or another, in [one] disease or another, and how do we add more value to our portfolio in the company?”
AstraZeneca is also looking to China, despite recent efforts by the U.S. government to restrict collaborations. While the new policy from the U.S. Department of the Treasury are not yet set in stone, Soriot expressed support for keeping the lines of collaboration open.
“When they come up with new medicines that can help cancer patients, people will want it,” the CEO said. “You don’t really mind where it’s coming from originally.”
Soriot added that when AstraZeneca, a global company, picks up an asset from China, it is ultimately developed, commercialized and even manufactured in the U.S.
“For all intents and purposes, it becomes a U.S. product, saving U.S. lives,” Soriot said. “We stay alert of all these potential legal changes, and we will of course respect them. But it’s important to remember that in science, collaboration is important, and in cancer or other diseases, people will want access to medicines that can save their lives.”
