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Business as Usual for No-Moat Lonza; Specialty Ingredients Carve-Out on Track for 2020

Contract manufacturer Lonza reported solid half-year results, with over CHF 2.9 billion in total sales year to date, up about 6.4% from last year and boosted by foreign exchange tailwinds. Core EBITDA margin expanded 30 basis points from last year to about 27.8%, helped slightly by new accounting standards. Management indicated that it continues to expect mid- to high-single-digit sales growth in 2019. We are maintaining our fair value estimate of CHF 210 per share and our no-moat rating. The ph...

Sasol Provides Full-Year Production Update

No-moat Sasol provided an update on its full-year fiscal 2019 production metrics that included relatively stable liquids production. For the full year ended June 30, Sasol produced 1,470 thousand barrels of crude oil and condensate a day compared with 1,469 mboe/d in the year-ago period. However, declines continued with the company’s natural gas production, down 4% to 130.3 billion cubic feet compared with the period ended June 30, 2018. Sasol also reported flat refined products of 31.4 mmboe/d ...

Astra Posts Solid 2Q, Driven by Strong Cancer Drug Sales and Moving Away From One-Time Divestments

We don't expect any major changes to our AstraZeneca fair value estimate following second-quarter results that largely fell in line with our expectations and slightly ahead of consensus expectations. Overall, the company is posting leading Big Pharma sales growth with total sales up 18% operationally year over year, led by impressive cancer drug sales growth of 57%. Astra's ability to continue to bring next generation drugs to the market that address unmet medical need (especially in oncology) s...