From Roche's conference call:
And the Rituxan growth was driven by the U.S. and international. Of course, we saw, as expected, a decline in the EU, partly due to the biosimilars and the subcutaneous formulation of Rituxan, which was now launched in the United States as of quarter two of Rituxan. It’s really off to a very good start, I can say.
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it’s still very early days, as you know, in the United States in terms of getting a handle on how the biosimilars are going to be uptake there, and I think it’s also a bit further off for us in terms of impact on our brands. So, the best experience we have is in Europe right now. And I would say that -- what I encourage you or discourage you, I would just say that it’s progressing as we would expect in Europe at this stage, let me say that. And I also think that the ability for us to make sure that we’re reacting and responding in the market so that physicians and patients have choice for the original brand will continue. And the other thing I would say to add a little color to that is that we’re finding in the very early days of Europe and I would expect that this is going to be similar in the United States as well with Rituxan, is that the subcutaneous has a preferential effect, if you like, in the biosimilar process. So, I think that that speaks for one level of defense, as we go into the Herceptin erosion too because as you know we have quite a high market share in Europe of Herceptin subcutaneous.
But just to be clear, we have no illusions that -- yes that we can stop the decline here. But, we clearly will do everything possible to have that brand preference.
Next question is from Vincent Meunier from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Vincent Meunier
...Other question on the biosimilars, can you tell us what are the trends in terms of pricing in Europe so far, and in the coming quarters?
On the biosimilars, I would say that -- yes, as you can imagine, it’s highly competitively sensitive, the pricing topics, I’m not going to give you details on that. I mean, you could probably ask some of the biosimilar manufacturers for their information, if they would like to expose it. But I would say, the following is that -- we think there’s value to the originator product. We think there’s value to our subcutaneous formulations that’s proving right in the market as well. And it’s again very much in line with what we expected. And we are in a good position I think to be able to respond to that with the complete understanding that we’re going to have significant erosion with MabThera. And I’d just point out that with MabThera we have two competitors in the market in Europe. The next competitor we expect to come in MabThera would only be beginning of 2019. So, we will have two players in the market predominantly between now and the beginning of 2019.
With Herceptin, we expect several competitors to come on, starting the early part of next year. And Herceptin may have some slightly different dynamics than Rituxan as well. And the last thing I would say is even if I -- even though I was open to providing you pricing, it is so different country-to-country, it varies so much in terms of how the tenders are working, whether they’re regional tenders or national tenders that if there’s one thing that’s true about this is that it’s heterogeneous, it’s not homogeneous.
