Last year, multinational pharmaceutical companies recorded astonishing sales.
According to the 2015 audit reports of major multinational companies submitted to the Financial Supervisory Service, a number of multinational companies including Pfizer Korea, Novartis Korea, Sanofi-Aventis Korea, Boehringer Ingelheim Korea, and Korea Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, all witnessed a growth in sales.

Pfizer Korea, whose sales surpassed 600 billion won, continued top-line growth with sales of 647.4 billion won.
Novartis Korea and Roche Korea also recorded sales of 455.2 billion won and 321.7 billion won respectively last year, a growth of more than 10% compared to last year.

Sanofi-Aventis Korea recorded sales of 284 billion won last year, a 7.7% growth from the previous year and Boehringer Ingelheim Korea also recorded sales of 235.5 billion won, a slight increase from the previous year.
Korea Otsuka also recorded sales of 136.3 billion won last year, continuing its growth at a rate of over 10% compared to the previous year.
UCB Korea saw its sales grow last year by 8.2% compared to the previous year reaching 59.5 billion won.

However, AstraZeneca Korea only recorded sales of 306.7 billion won, a drop of 3% compared to the previous year and was the only multinational company with a sluggish performance.

But when it came to operating profits and net profits during this period, the multinational companies showed some differences.
Pfizer Korea, which had managed outward growth, was unable to turn out a strong performance seeing both its operating profit and net profit record deficits and Korea Otsuka also saw its operating profit and net profit drop compared to the previous year, despite having recorded sales growth of over 10%.

AstraZeneca Korea, which saw its sales drop, also saw its operating profit and net profit decrease by over 10% compared to the previous year.
On the other hand, Sanofi-Aventis Korea and Boehringer Ingelheim Korea nearly doubled their operating profits from the previous year.

As for the number of employees, Pfizer Korea maintained the same size from 2013 until last year with 750 employees, whereas Novartis Korea significantly downsized its workforce from 554 in 2014 to 514 last year.

In contrast, the number of employees noticeably increased at AstraZeneca Korea from 372 to 406 despite the decline in sales.