Merck reports solid organic performance

Mer­ck, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, report­ed sol­id organ­ic sales growth for the sec­ond quar­ter of 2018 and a slight increase in sales despite con­sid­er­ably neg­a­tive for­eign exchange effects. EBITDA pre declined in com­par­i­son with the year-ear­li­er quar­ter and was also impact­ed by for­eign exchange effects. The firm con­firmed its full-year fore­cast for 2018 with respect to organ­ic busi­ness per­for­mance yet now expects a slight weak­en­ing of neg­a­tive for­eign exchange effects.
“In the sec­ond quar­ter, the Mer­ck Group gen­er­at­ed sol­id organ­ic sales growth, which was main­ly attrib­ut­able to our Life Sci­ence and Health­care busi­ness sec­tors. This also reflects the pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions of our new med­i­cines Baven­cio and Maven­clad. Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als also gen­er­at­ed slight organ­ic sales growth owing to the strong devel­op­ment of Semi­con­duc­tor Solu­tions,” said Ste­fan Oschmann, Chair­man of the Exec­u­tive Board and CEO. “Over­all, we con­firm our fore­cast for organ­ic per­for­mance in 2018, a year of tran­si­tion with many chal­lenges, as already stat­ed at the begin­ning of the year.”