Hands off our tax breaks, GSK boss Emma Walmsley tells Reeves as she bows out on a high

GSK boss Emma Walmsley has warned Chancellor Rachel Reeves against tinkering with the pharma industry’s tax regime as the UK drugs giant raised profits and sales forecasts for the year.

The pharma chief executive, who steps down at the end of 2025, said it was ‘absolutely critical’ to incentivise investment, including maintaining tax credits on research and development.

‘The more important area of focus for us is to make sure that nothing happens that hampers UK competitiveness in terms of changes to tax measures,’ Walmsley said.

She added that the tax credit scheme, which lets firms reduce corporation tax bills if they invest in developing products, was ‘really key’ for GSK to keep investing in Britain.

The comments came as the FTSE 100 firm delivered strong results for the three months to September.

Sales rose 8 per cent to £8.5billion, and profits were up 11 per cent to nearly £3billion.

Revenues were driven by a 13 per cent rise in sales of shingles vaccine Shingrix, with high demand in Europe offsetting a slowdown in the US.

It also raked in more from HIV and cancer drugs, where sales rose 12 per cent and 39 per cent respectively.

Sales for the year so far are up 6 per cent to £24billion, with profits up 9 per cent to £8.1billion.

It expects revenues for the year to rise by between 6 per cent and 7 per cent, while profits are predicted to grow 9 per cent to 11 per cent compared to prior predictions of 6 per cent to 8 per cent.

GSK shares rose 6.6 per cent, or 108p, to 1752p on the back of the results.

Sheena Berry, healthcare analyst at Quilter Cheviot, said that as Walmsley’s replacement will be Luke Miels, the company’s chief commercial officer, performance was expected to be ‘more of the same’ but rows over drug pricing made it ‘difficult to predict’ future sales.

Walmsley is stepping down after nine years at the helm, during which she spearheaded a major shake-up to focus more directly on developing ground-breaking drugs.

A major milestone came in 2022 when the consumer healthcare arm Haleon,

the manufacturer of Sensodyne toothpaste, was split off as a separate company in a blockbuster stock market float in London.