Germany's Merck KGaA reported higher earnings and sales for the third quarter, helped by organic growth across its three businesses, and narrowed its outlook for the full year.
The life-sciences and chemicals group said Thursday that it made an after-tax profit of 898 million euros ($1.04 billion) for the third quarter compared with 812 million euros for the year-earlier period.
Excluding exceptional items, the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization--its preferred profit metric--were 1.67 billion euros, up 3.1% on year and up 8.8% organically.
Net sales grew 5.2% organically to 5.32 billion euros. The company said solid organic growth across all sectors contributed to its performance, particularly driven by demand for pharma-production products in its life-sciences segment, rare diseases treatments in its healthcare business and semiconductor materials in its electronics unit.
Analysts had forecast third-quarter Ebitda before exceptional items of 1.56 billion euros on net sales of 5.23 billion euros, according to consensus estimates compiled by Vara Research.
For the full year, Merck confirmed its outlook, narrowing its guidance ranges but leaving the midpoints unchanged. It now expects organic sales growth of about 3% in sales and of 5% to 7% in Ebitda before exceptional items, which compares with prior forecasts of organic sales growth of 2% to 5% and of Ebitda before exceptional items increasing by 4% to 8% organically.
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