Sanofi beefing up diabetes pipeline, sees growth returning

PARIS (Reuters) - Sanofi sees a more diversified pipeline driving a return to growth at its diabetes unit in the coming years and will consider acquisitions and partnerships to help boost performance, a company executive said on Tuesday.

"I will not commit to a new guidance for 2019 but we are clearly optimistic for the business," Stefan Oelrich, executive vice president Diabetes and Cardiovascular at Sanofi, told Reuters.

He cited new drugs under development, the rising number of diabetes sufferers around the world and technological breakthroughs as among his reasons for optimism.

The company had previously forecast diabetes revenue to shrink by 4 to 8 percent a year on average over 2015-2018 as its patent-expired Lantus insulin is being squeezed by pricing pressure in the United States, the world's-largest health market.

Failure to maintain growth at one of Sanofi's main divisions led some investors to question the group's strategy.

Sanofi, whose sales of diabetes medications were down 11.1 percent at constant exchange rates to 6.4 billion euros ($7.46 billion) last year, currently sells eight diabetes drugs and has four others in development.

($1 = 0.8584 euros)

(Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Richard Lough)